Trouble
by rahleeyah
Summary: Alt series 8. As Ruth and Harry struggle to find their feet in the wake of her return they are beset by trouble on all sides. Will they make it through together? Now complete.
1. Chapter 1

" _Harry."_

The way she spoke his name, low and soft and sad as a song, sliced through him deeper than any knife, left his heart cracked and bleeding there in the corridor outside her little flat. How could it be, he asked himself, after two long years of separation, after everything he'd lost, everything _she'd_ lost, that she still held this power over him? She'd been back in his life for less than a month, and already he needed her more than he needed his next breath.

"What are you doing here?" she asked when he offered no explanation, just stood there in her doorway looking downtrodden and forlorn. She was soft and lovely, as ever, her hair longer than when she'd left him, the dark circles under her eyes speaking so eloquently of the many sleepless nights since they'd been rescued from Mani's clutches. How had he forgotten just how small she was, how when she stood before him like this with no shoes upon her feet that the top of her head came up just underneath his chin, the perfect height for him to wrap her in his arms, to cradle her close and whisper against her hair that he would never let anyone or anything hurt her ever again?

"I didn't know where else to go," he confessed quietly.

It was true; the operation with the Tazbeks had come to an end, Bibi was dead, Jo was drowning in righteous indignation, and Harry was lost. Nothing had been right since Ruth had returned to him, broken and distant as the moon. She was finally back in London, where she belonged, but she was not by his side, had for the first few weeks doggedly refused to see him until at last she relented, until she stood beside him on the bridge and offered him what little absolution she could. It was not forgiveness, not complete, not yet, but she had come to him, had been kind to him, had offered him that sad little smile that had haunted his dreams during all the long days of her exile, and in that moment, standing beside her, knowing that she did not hate him, not truly, he had felt hope for the first time in many long years. Though he did not know what would come next, for him, for her, for them, he clung to that hope, that hope that had brought him here to her door.

Ruth did not laugh at him, did not rage at him, did not chide him, did not even sigh in resignation. She simply nodded, catching her bottom lip between her teeth and ducking her head in the way she did when she did not know what else to do, and took a silent step back, holding the door open for him to enter.

 _Safe house_ was something of a misnomer, he thought as he entered the little flat for the first time. It was hardly safe, tucked away inside a towerblock full of all sorts of undesirable characters, the roar of the motorway outside rattling the windows. And it was hardly a house, just three little rooms, with only the barest furniture and no sign of life. For all that it was not hers, that it was dark and cold and soulless, there were still some touches of Ruth, for those who knew what to look for. Her shoes in an untidy heap by the door, her coat cast over the back of the little sofa, dirty teacups in the sink, a book lying open in the chair by the only window. She had been reading, then, had been sitting alone, quiet and pensive, in this awful little flat, and he had interrupted her solitude, a ghost drifting through to unsettle and unnerve her.

"Would you like a cup of tea?" she asked him, leading him to the open space that served as both sitting room and kitchen. "The kettle is just about the only thing that works in here."

"Tea would be lovely," he answered softly. How was it, he wondered as he followed her, docile as a chastised dog, that she could invite him into her home, could offer him tea so kindly, when she had lost her husband and her child and her whole life, for his sake.

There was a small round table set off to the side and so Harry settled himself in one of the chairs, watching her as she started the kettle and fetched two clean cups, keeping her back towards him all the while. She was dressed, as ever, in a long dark skirt, but gone were the bohemian tops and garish jewelry she had favored in her previous life. Instead she wore a black cardigan, wrapped tight around her lithe frame, and underneath it a soft black top. She had no further adornment, had not troubled herself with makeup, and as she went through the motions of domesticity not three feet from where he sat he could not help but think of her as a ghost, all in black, her skin so pale, her eyes so huge and sad. She was a shadow, a remnant of who she had been before, just as was he. So much had changed; how could they possibly hope to move forward, to face the future together, after so much grief?

"I spoke to the Home Secretary," he said, suddenly feeling the need to shatter the silence that surrounded them. Ruth did not respond, did not make any sound or turn to face him, only carried on pouring their tea, fetching milk and sugar from the cabinets. None of either for her, and too much of both for him, and wasn't it strange, that she had changed the way she took her tea but remembered his preferences exactly?

"He owes me rather a large favor, you see, and he remembered you, from before. He's given me assurances that he will do whatever he can to...give you back your name."

This time Ruth did sigh, lifting both their cups and carrying them over to the table. Even the cups were soulless, black and smooth, utterly unmemorable. Ruth had owned a eclectic variety of teacups, he remembered, some chipped, some covered in little cats or birds, all different sizes and shapes, no two the same. What had become of all those teacups? For some reason the thought made him sad.

"I went by Ruth, in Cyprus," she said softly, staring down at her tea. "I chose a different surname, of course, but I wanted to be Ruth again. Maybe that was the wrong choice. Maybe that's how they…"

Her voice left her and she gave a little cough to cover the sudden welling of her emotion, but she did not fool him; Harry had seen the sheen of tears in the corners of her eyes. He wanted so badly to reassure her, but somehow he thought it would not comfort her, to know that Mani would have found her no matter where she went, no matter what she called herself, that nothing she could have done would have been sufficient to protect her. It was all he had to give her, and so he kept his mouth closed.

"Still. It would be nice to be Evershed again. To stay in this country. I've been away far too long."

At those words she squared her shoulders and looked at him, right in the eye, for the first time since he'd arrived at her door. There was grief in her, yes, but resilience, too. She was here, sharing her tea and her time with him, had once more willingly thrown her lot in with his, and the look in her eyes told him everything he needed to know. Wounded but strong, she would carry on. Somehow, though he could not say how, could not discern the exact moment of her transfiguration, she had become the only woman in the world who could ever hope to stand by his side, the only one who would ever want to. Death and damnation dogged his steps, and this beautiful, brilliant, broken woman understood that better than anyone else ever could. Oh, Ros and Jo had faced their fair share of pain, but theirs was a different path in life. Ruth understood _him,_ understood what it was to make the choices that put people like Ros and Jo in danger, to stand on the wall while his soldiers fell all around him. Ruth knew what it was to play the long game, knew what it was to sacrifice every piece on the board, just to protect the queen. Ruth _knew_ , and she was not running from him.

"I can't tell you, Ruth," he began, his voice hoarse as if he'd been shouting for hours, struggling for every word, "how _sorry-"_

"If you apologize one more time I think I'll scream," she told him tartly.

He let loose a short, sharp bark of laughter. How very Ruth; she had always been clever, had always possessed a talent for knocking him onto the back foot.

"Very well," he agreed. "Then let me just say how... _glad_ I am, to have you back home."

For a long moment she regarded him in silence, her eyes huge and shining brighter than any star. How had he forgotten the ocean-dark radiance of those eyes, the way they cut him to the quick, the way they enchanted him, the way they seemed to see straight through to the very heart of him?

"It's good to be back," she answered slowly, neither moving nor looking away, remaining rooted in the moment with him, and in those words he heard everything she wanted to say, everything she could not say, not yet, not now, with her husband's death so fresh in her mind and her life in ruins. "I've missed it," she said, and in the resultant stillness he heard her voice echoing in the vault of his mind. _I missed you._

And oh, but he had missed her, had longed for her, had lost track of the moments when he had looked up from his desk, his eyes searching for her, though he knew that she was gone. She was everything to him, his guiding light, his hope, his guardian angel, the dagger twisting in his back, the wound in his chest that would never properly heal, so long as she was far from his side. She was everything, and finally, after all his nights of longing, after all the many days when he had closed his eyes and asked himself _what Ruth want me to do,_ she was here. She was here, sitting across the table from him, sharing her tea, her time, her gentle words. It seemed a miracle, seemed too good to be true, and so he savored every second, until she spoke and shattered him anew.

"I want to come back to work, Harry," she told him softly.


	2. Chapter 2

_One week later…_

"It isn't much," Harry said apologetically as he began unpacking the various takeaway containers from the bag he'd carried to her doorstep. Ruth smiled at him wanly, too exhausted to protest. For each of the last seven days he'd contacted her somehow, had rung her mobile or sent Jo round to see her or done as he was doing now, showed up on her doorstep late in the evening with a pile of food, somehow knowing that she hadn't eaten despite the fact that he'd offered her no warning. It was as if he simply couldn't stay away, and Ruth suspected she knew the reason why. He felt guilty, for ruining her life, for George's death, for all the heartbreak she'd endured. And though rationally she understood that it was not Harry's doing, that he had tried his best to play for time and save them both, there was a piece of her heart that she feared would never forgive him. So much had been lost, for Harry's sake, and she couldn't reconcile it, the blame she longed to place at his feet and the affection she still carried for him.

It was that affection more than anything else that kept her up at night, that kept her from eating, kept her listlessly turning the pages of the books Jo had brought to her without reading a single word. _Yes,_ she grieved for George, _yes,_ she felt guilty for his loss, but she knew she could not have stopped it, knew that it was Mani's work and no one else's that ended his life. And she knew, deep in the darkest corner of her heart where she feared to tread, that she had never loved him. Oh, he had been kind, gentle, generous, even, but he had never truly won her over, had never truly buried himself beneath her skin the way a lover should. The way Harry had done. That she should care for Harry still, after two long years of separation, after seeing first hand just how dangerous it was to be in his proximity, left her troubled and distressed. Yet she could not deny the way her spirits lifted each time she heard his voice, could not deny that each day as the sun began to sink she found herself looking towards the door, hoping he would come to her again. Their situation was precarious, new and terrifying, but her reckless heart longed to see what would happen next.

A strange sort of shift had taken place between them over the last few days, she knew. Before her exile their every interaction had been colored by intrigue and doubt; she had keenly felt the difference in their stations, the importance of preserving her professional integrity, whatever the longing of her heart. And though she had told him she wanted to go back to work, though she had made the decision to willingly step once more into those old familiar roles, she no longer saw him as superior to her in any way. He had all but confessed his love to her on a foggy morning by the riverside, and she had taken his face in her hands and kissed him with everything she had, and then in that warehouse, that terrible day, they had faced hell together. They were equals, now, in a way they never had been before, grief and calamity having leveled the playing field between them for once and for all. There was no need for her to worry, when she returned to work, if people might suspect there was something between she and Harry; Ros and Jo both knew what she had done for his sake so many years before, and Lucas had been there, when Mani died, had cut the bonds from her hands and borne silent witness as Harry took her in his arms, as she buried her face against his chest and wept. The team _knew_ , now, and there would be no denying it, no need to hide how much he relied upon her. Everything had changed.

"Ruth?" Harry said softly, and she gave her head a little shake, drawing herself back into the present and reaching out to accept the plate he'd offered her.

"You didn't have to do this, Harry," she answered, wanting to thank him and yet finding that the words died on her lips. Though she was grateful to him, for his concern, his time, his company - for the food - the look of pity in his eyes turned her stomach. Was that all he felt for her now? she wondered as she looked at him, as he settled himself in the rickety chair on the opposite side of the table, pulling a face as it groaned beneath his bulk. Ruth's own emotions were too jumbled, too raw, for her to analyze them properly, but one thing she knew for certain was that she still cared for him. Harry's motivations in seeking her out were less clear. Perhaps it was only duty, a sense of responsibility for her dismal circumstances that sent him to her side; sometimes when he looked at her, she saw only sadness, and in those moments she could believe it was so. Other times, though, he came to her lost, his eyes wide and pleading, searching for some reassurance only she could give, and her certainty faltered. For whatever reason he could not stay away, and she lacked the strength to dismiss him.

"I wanted to," he answered, smiling a sad little smile before tucking into his meal.

For several long minutes they ate in silence, sipping wine and drowning in memories. It was close on 9:00 p.m., when Harry turned up at her door with food in hand, and yet she had not for a moment even considered turning him away, had not even balked at the notion of sharing a meal with him while she was dressed in only a pair of soft black leggings and an oversized grey t-shirt Jo had given her, her feet bare upon the floor and her hair an untidy mess. Let him see her as she was, she told herself, and decide for himself if he was willing to stay.

"I've spoken to the Home Secretary again," Harry told her once he'd had his fill of silence. "Everything is on track for you to start in two weeks' time."

Ruth wanted to smile at him, to tell him that she was glad of it, that she was looking forward to her return to work, but somehow she couldn't quite form the words. Over the last week she'd had more than enough time to consider her somewhat rash decision to return to the Grid, to ask herself why she'd done such a thing, why she would willingly step back into that place. What sort of woman, she'd asked herself, when faced with the opportunity to rebuild her life from scratch, would step back into a world of shadows, would willingly subject herself to grief and danger and loss? In the time she'd been away Adam and Zaf had both perished horribly, and Malcolm had retired, and the sparkle had departed from Jo's brilliant eyes. Even Ros was changed, had become somehow more sympathetic, more understanding, as if pain had smoothed her jagged edges. Why, then, would she choose to go back?

 _Because I have nowhere else to go._

Deep in her heart, Ruth knew that the Grid was her home. Anywhere else she went, any other task she undertook, she would be forced to live a lie. The details of her life, both the mundane and the catastrophic, would have to be hidden away. She would not be able to explain why her hands began to shake when a dark SUV passed her on the road, would not be able to give a reason for her racing heart and wild eyes when some calamity was reported on the news and she would recoil knowing that the truth was much, much worse, wondering if another of her friends had perished. She would be able to offer no explanation for the tears that struck her in the still of the night, for her wary heart. Faced with the prospect of hiding so much of herself Ruth knew she would remain alone, untethered, without comfort or joy, and she could not face such a future. At least on the Grid she would be surrounded by people who understood her, people who did not ask questions, people who would support her; they were a family of sorts, buried deep in the bowels of Thames House, and that family was the only thing she had left. And so, though she be damned for it, she had chosen to return.

And when Harry looked at her now, his eyes soft and troubled and knowing, she knew that he understood.

"I do want to come back, Harry," she told him, needing to give voice to the unspoken thoughts that arced through the air between them.

"I know," he said, and his voice was so very low and so very sad that she decided to change the topic at once, lest they both fall so deep into melancholy that they could not be recovered.

"As soon as I have my papers, I'll look into getting a place of my own," she said, trying to sound more cheerful.

"About that," Harry said, the faintest hint of a smile playing around the corners of his lips. "I've arranged a new position for you. How does Senior Intelligence Analyst sound?"

"Pretentious," she answered, trying to ignore the flush of pleasure that washed over her as he barked out a laugh.

"It comes with a healthy pay rise, if that sweetens the deal," Harry told her. "You'll be able to live somewhere much nicer than this."

 _They'll have found us somewhere much nicer._

The memories struck her like whiplash, every now and then, left her gasping and aching and utterly overwhelmed, but she pressed on, trying with all her might not to drown beneath the weight of her sorrow.

"Well that's something, at least. I understand my mother sold my house."

Another misstep, she realized, as Harry's face fell right along with her heart. She had not spoken to her mother yet, not knowing how exactly she should go about breaking the news that she was not dead after all. How did one even start such a conversation? She asked herself. Her mother and David had buried both their children, and she had no idea how to explain to them that of the pair of them she was the one who had returned, while Peter remained just as dead. Would it break David's heart, she wondered, to watch as she hugged her mother while he still missed his son? Or would her step-father be relieved that at least she was not gone, at least there was still hope for grandchildren, for a future that looked brighter than it had the day before? She didn't know, and she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to find out.

"I did try to salvage a few of your things," Harry told her softly. "A few books, some momentos. And the cats, of course."

Despite herself Ruth smiled. They had discussed her cats shortly after her return, and knowing that Harry had taken them in, that he had cared for them as he said he would and that they were waiting for her, safe and well, a living reminder of the life she'd lost, the girl she'd been before, had buoyed her spirits immensely.

"I'd like to see them," she confessed shyly. They had never been particularly good at discussing emotions, she and Harry, had only ever briefly touched on the longings of their hearts, and then only in moments of great distress, and so even that small admission felt vast and full of potential. Would he offer to bring them round, to let her keep them in this flat? Or would he extend a different sort of invitation entirely? For a single instant she waited, her breath frozen in her lungs, wondering how Harry would have interpreted her simple statement, wondering where they would go from here.

"I think they'd like to see you," he said, smiling at her warmly. "I know they don't travel well-" _and how on earth do you know that?_ She wondered, suddenly full of questions; had he taken them to the vet? Had he tried to foist them off on someone else? "- and this flat is not ideal for pets. I have a rostered day off on Saturday, if you'd like to come round in the afternoon and spend some time with them."

He looked positively bashful, almost shocked by his own forwardness, and Ruth's heart went out to him. No doubt he'd suggested she come round in the afternoon because he intended to spend the morning on the Grid, day off or not, and she could not stop the secret little smile that tugged at her lips at the thought of how well she still knew him, even after all this time, at the way he had remained so perfectly, undeniably himself despite everything that had happened.

"I would like that very much," she told him, only just resisting the urge to reach out and touch his hand across the table top. It was too soon for such gestures, too soon for the warmth that infused her chest as he smiled at her, too soon for want and hope, when all her dreams lay dead and buried with George, but the possibility for all of those things lingered, just the same. In the dark hours of the night, after he'd gone, when she lay awake with nothing but the sound of the mortorway for company Ruth would curse herself for her unchangeable heart, for the way the memory of George's voice faded that little bit more with each passing day, for the role she'd played in his demise and Nico's orphaning, but in that moment, sitting there with Harry, she felt perilously close to happy.


	3. Chapter 3

_Saturday_

There was something freeing about taking the tube to Harry's side of the city, watching all the people coming and going, immersed once more in the joyous cacophony of London. Ruth had not ventured out much since her return, had been too haunted by the shadows lurking in every corner, had jumped at every raised voice she heard, certain that her time was up, that her life was in danger. Things were different this time; it was a beautiful day, and she was going to see her cats - and, more importantly, to see Harry - and no one seemed to look at her twice. She took a deep breath for the first time in what seemed like weeks, and tried to steady the trembling of her hands.

It was not only fear that set her hands to shaking; thoughts of Harry had plagued her for weeks now, and she seemed no closer to reaching any sort of understanding. He was kind to her, and warm, had seen to her needs and sought her out just to assure himself that she was well, and Ruth had felt her heart yielding beneath the relentless onslaught of his regard for her. Nevermind that George was dead, nevermind that her life was in ruins; her treacherous, traitorous heart seemed quite content to move on as if no time at all had passed between that day on the bank of the Thames and the present. It was grief, she knew; _you're in denial,_ she'd tell herself when she found a smile on her lips, a smile that was almost always followed by her wondering when the other shoe would drop, when the full force of her loss would hit her square in the chest and send her reeling. The _anger_ stage of proceedings had come and gone; Ruth had raged against Harry, had spurned him, had sent bitter words hurtling at him, but in the end her ire had cooled, as it inevitably must, and she was now stuck firmly in a strange, alternate sort of world where her heart didn't hurt as much as it should, where she could look forward to seeing Harry again and not think of all the blame she longed to lay at his feet.

 _Be careful,_ she told herself as she stepped blinking into the daylight, taking a moment to orient herself before heading off toward Harry's on foot. It was dangerous, she knew, to feel this free, this happy, this resilient. Ruth knew her own soul, knew the darkness that had claimed her in the past, knew how she had fallen beneath the weight of loss, and she knew that this bright, brittle feeling of hope would not last, and that the harder she clung to it now, the greater would be her devastation when at last it deserted her and she plummeted to the earth. She felt wild, skidding along the edge of hysteria with every breath she took, and yet she could not seem to stop the ricocheting course of her life. She should not have gone to Harry's, should not have consented to have him in her flat late at night, should not have fixed his tea and taken his calls, but it was too late for prudence, too late for distance.

She had already arrived.

Ruth rang the bell and in a moment Harry appeared, glorious, terrible Harry, and a reckless sort of laugh borne of confusion and terror and grief bubbled up in the back of Ruth's throat, though she managed to keep it at bay. He was only a man after all, she reminded herself as she stepped into his home; he was not a god or a devil, was not a monster who had ruined her life or a hero who had saved her. Harry was only a man, a man who cared for her, a man who did his best, and the racing of her heart calmed as she looked at him. The feverish twistings of her mind settled, and all thoughts of grief and guilt and _what should have been_ and _what we deserve_ faded into nothingness, replaced with the calm sort of lassitude his proximity inspired in her of late.

"It's good to see you, Ruth," he told her, as if he hadn't just eaten dinner with her the day before yesterday.

"It's good to be here, Harry," she answered him, hoping that he understood that she meant those words in every possible way they could be interpreted.

He took a step back and ushered her into his home, and she took the opportunity to study him, his casual jumper and his bare feet on the floorboards. It was comforting, somehow, to see Harry like this, at home, far away from anything that might remind Ruth of chaos and bloodshed. Standing here, dressed like this, he could be a banker or a history teacher; nothing about him looked like lies and betrayal. _But that's the way of lies,_ a vicious little voice whispered in the back of her mind. _You never recognize them until it's too late._

"I'll make us some tea, while you get reacquainted," Harry said with a smile, gesturing towards the sitting room. Ruth followed his unspoken instruction, stepping into that space that smelled faintly of him, the walls lined with books and the sofa looking as if no one had ever sat on it before. Her cats were curled up together, sunning themselves beneath the window, but at the sound of her footsteps they both looked up, and then as one they rushed at her, winding round and round her ankles and mewling up at her the way they always did when they were angling for a bit of extra supper.

The sight of those little cats quite overwhelmed her, and Ruth collapsed on the floor at once, gathering them into her lap where they jockeyed for position, each trying to rub his face against her own cheek at the same time. A deep, shuddering sob bubbled up from within her chest, and as she held her little cats Ruth let the tears come. _Maybe this is it,_ she thought as the sadness struck her square in the chest, the realization that her whole life was gone, and all that remained to give evidence of the woman she had been was these two cats. _Maybe this is the moment when it happens._ Maybe this would be the moment when she would realize she could not go on, when sorrow broke her clean in half, as she rather felt it ought to have done, under the circumstances. Maybe this would be the moment when she could at last put aside her childish infatuation with Harry, and accept that she wanted no part of his world.

"Here we are," Harry said softly as he came padding up behind her, moving on silent feet.

For one mad moment Ruth wished she could just ignore him, hide the evidence of her emotions from his piercing gaze, but she knew that she could not, not here in his house while she was sitting on the floor, and so she lifted her chin to face him, let him see her as she was.

"I know you don't take milk in your tea, any more," Harry said, not balking at the sight of her tears, though she noted the tightening in his jaw, the furrowing of his brow, as if he would willingly do battle with whoever - or whatever - had made her sad. _If only,_ she thought. "But I brought some, at any rate," he finished his thought, laying out a tray of tea things on the low table beside her.

Ruth smiled, though the tears continued to slip silently down her cheeks. Perhaps the cats were not the only remnant of the girl she had been, for Harry was still here, smiling at her softly, and he had brought milk for her tea, because he remembered. Maybe one day, she told herself, remembering wouldn't hurt so much.

* * *

 _Two weeks later…_

The shrill ringing of a mobile had Ruth blinking blearily in the darkness, trying to make sense of where she was and what was happening. The sun had not yet begun to rise, and the somewhat shabby state of the wallpaper told her at once that she was in the safehouse where she had been every day since Lucas and the team had rescued her from the warehouse. Slowly the details came into focus; the battered clock on the bedside table, telling her it was not quite 3:00 a.m., the soft white pillow under her cheek, the broad forearm draped around her waist, holding her tight against a warm, solid body.

"Yours or mine?" a deep voice growled from behind her, apparently as displeased with this interruption as Ruth herself was.

"Yours," she answered.

With a groan Harry rolled away from her, reaching blindly in the darkness for his mobile. Ruth shifted into the space he'd left behind, shivering at the loss of his heat at her back.

"Pearce," Harry barked into the phone, shifting around so that he was sitting upright, while Ruth remained right where she was, lying naked by his side. He ran one hand through his sparse hair, dragging it down to scrub at his face as if to wipe away all remnants of sleep. _Is it always like this for him?_ Ruth wondered as she watched him, the rise and fall of his bare chest, the warmth in his eyes when he caught her gaze. This was the third morning she'd woken up with Harry beside her, and the third time their slumber had been disturbed by the ringing of his mobile. It seemed to Ruth that they had set a rather alarming precedent.

"And you're certain it's going to be tomorrow?" Harry asked, his brow furrowing with worry.

 _Tomorrow._ Ruth liked the sound of that not at all. Tomorrow - well today, technically - was to be her first day back on the Grid, and she was feeling nervous enough about her return to work without having to add the extra worry of an operation already gone pear-shaped. Harry had, somewhat stubbornly, staunchly refused to share any information with her until she was officially reinstated, until she had picked up her security pass from the desk at Thames House and stepped through the pods once more, and so she remained frustratingly in the dark. A little bit of information might have been useful, might have set her mind at rest, might have made her transition a little bit easier to bear.

That transition was going to be difficult enough as it was, now that she and Harry had fallen into bed together. Ruth had not anticipated this, had not planned for it, had no notion of how she was supposed to navigate the murky waters of their relationship now that everything had changed, now that she craved his proximity even as she hated herself for wanting him. If she were asked to explain it, to give some reckoning of how it had happened, how she had gone from cursing Harry to sleeping beside him over the course of a month, she would not be able to offer any explanation. All she knew was that when he was beside her she felt calm, and at peace, and when he was gone her heart tore itself to shreds with pain and doubt. All she knew was that late one night he had appeared on her doorstep empty handed, and she had known without need of words exactly what it was he wanted from her. She had reached for his hand and tugged him into the flat and he had fallen upon her in a moment, his kissing searing her to the core even as she ran her fingers through his hair, holding him close against her. All she knew was that when he pushed her back against the duvet and covered her body with his own she had whispered _please please please_ and pulled him with her into a spiraling oblivion where, for however brief a time, nothing hurt. All she knew was that when he left her the next morning, called away by work and dropping an apologetic kiss against her cheek, her body had ached with want of him, and she had been counting down the seconds until he would come back to her.

"Well, Ros will be on site, and I'll have you and Jo to coordinate the surveillance. I want you to stick close, in case Ros needs to make a quick escape."

 _Lucas, then,_ Ruth decided as she listened to Harry speak. Though Ruth did not know what exactly it was Ros was up to she had eavesdropped on enough of Harry's conversations over the last few days to deduce that whatever it was it was both delicate, and not particularly dangerous. Why Lucas felt the need to bother Harry with it at three in the morning escaped her.

"Well, keep me informed. I'll speak to you in the morning," Harry said, and just like that, the call was ended. He cast his mobile down onto the bedside table, and then with a weary sigh he slid down beside her, his arms encircling her at once, drawing her close. Ruth shifted in his arms, finding a comfortable position with her head pillowed on his shoulder and her arm around his waist while his broad hands trailed up and down her back, trying to warm her, trying to soothe her.

"I am sorry about that," Harry said contritely.

"It's fine," Ruth murmured, pressing a kiss against his neck as once more sleep began to steal over her. "That's the job."

"Sometimes," Harry said darkly, "I wish it wasn't."

Ruth just hummed, already dangerously close to falling back to sleep in his arms. He was warm and real and here and holding her, and as long as he was there, he kept the sorrow at bay. Tomorrow would be a day for trials and worries; for now Ruth was safe, and she was determined to enjoy it.


	4. Chapter 4

" _You're all flustered,"_ she said, smiling at him warmly, some ghost of her former, more playful self taking over for a moment, replacing the shadow she had become.

For a moment he was struck dumb by the sight of her, the soft curl of her hair, the shine of her eyes, her confidence as she stood once more on the Grid, where she belonged, stepping up to take her place by his side. He had left her early that morning, had snatched a few more hours' sleep after Lucas's call and then dragged himself away from her, dropping a gentle kiss against her temple and murmuring _come find me,_ half-convinced that she would change her mind and abandon him again. The fear of losing her dogged his every step, and the relief that washed over him at the sight of her was all-consuming.

It was strange, really, how easily they had fallen into place together, and Harry was naturally suspicious of anything that came to him easily. He had been desperate with longing for her from the moment she'd left his side two years before, had been hungry for the warmth of her skin from the moment she'd been led into the warehouse with him, but Ruth's reciprocation of those desires left him flabbergasted. Their relationship prior to her exile - such as it was - had remained frustratingly chaste, not for lack of trying on Harry's part but rather due to Ruth's own natural reticence. She had been skittish as a deer and frightened of whispers, and though he could not understand it he had come to reconcile himself to it. Upon her return he had been certain that grief and her own tendency to blame herself for every calamity that befell her would keep her far from his side, and yet, she had surprised him. He had been unable to curb his own yearning for her, had been unable to keep away, and when the dam had burst and his need had sent him careening into her path that night just one week prior she had seized the moment with both hands, had taken him to bed and sheltered him in the valley of her thighs and never once asked _why,_ never once hurtled accusations at his feet. She had been soft and kind, had blessed him with gentle hands and her tender voice, had not balked when work called him away from her. Three blissful, too-short nights they'd spent together, and already he was addicted her, desperate for more, wondering when next he might be allowed the honor of falling asleep wrapped around her.

Perhaps it was wrong, to pursue a woman so recently bereaved. He had been surprised - and, he was ashamed to say, somewhat relieved - to learn that Ruth and George had not been properly married, for all the she referred to him as her husband. Sometimes in the still of the night the sound of her screams would echo in the vaults of his mind like some ghastly bell, and he would wonder if he had made a mistake, if the ghost of her Cypriot lover would find him and make his life a misery for insinuating himself into her life when the man was barely cold. And it wasn't only George she'd lost, he knew; she'd cared for the boy, and his family had snatched him away from her, never to be seen or heard from again. She was devastated, lost and broken, and he had thrust himself into her life in rather ungentlemanly fashion.

Still, though, he rather got the impression that she enjoyed their time together. The sadness lingered in her eyes, even when he held her, but she spoke to him more openly now than she ever had done before, asked after his children and told him all he wanted to know of her life beyond the bounds of the realm - though, to be fair, that was precious little. Harry didn't want to spend more time than he had to thinking about Ruth in the arms of another man, a taller, younger man, not now that he knew firsthand the taste of her, the exquisite heat of her. Harry had never been very good at sharing, and he certainly wasn't about to start now, now that he come to understand her in a way he never hope to before. Over the last few weeks, and those three beautiful nights, his whole notion of her had changed. He had always known that she was strong, and brave, and brilliant, but before she'd left him, heartsore and pining, on the banks of the Thames, he had always thought of her as fragile, had always wondered if he would ever know the truth of her. That truth had been revealed to him now, though. Now he saw that her softness was not weakness, saw the bones of steel beneath her delicate facade. The quiet words they had exchanged, tangled beneath the bedsheets in that terrible dingy flat had shown him the resilience of her, the startling depth of her soul, and he craved her more with each passing breath.

It was dangerous, he knew, to become too comfortable with the state of affairs between them. The nights they'd spent together had been no more than a reprieve, for the time had come for her to rejoin his world of shadows. She was not his secret sanctuary, any more, tucked away in a flat in Peckham, waiting with open arms to greet him at the end of his working day. She was here, now, and he would have to find a way to work with her, to join the two disparate halves of their lives together. For now, having had a taste of what they could be away from this place, he knew he could not give it up. He wanted everything, all she had to give, her days and her nights and her words and her touch, and he would do whatever it took to keep her.

"That happens sometimes," he told her wryly. "Such as when a group of armed thugs kidnap eight of the wealthiest and most politically powerful men on the planet."

"And on my first day back, too," she quipped, and his heart soared to see that she was not bowed by this news, not cowed by her first brush with disaster so early in the day. "Harry, you shouldn't have."

* * *

As Harry made his way across town to the safehouse late that evening his thoughts were quiet and full of lament. Jo, brilliant, beautiful Jo, Jo who had come to them so young and full of curiosity, who had been so shattered by pain and loss, who had matured into a shadow as hard and enduring as any of them, was gone. Taken by a bullet fired from Ros Myers's gun; that was a mess Harry was unwilling to untangle at present. Ros had been placed on leave and his heart was heavy with grief, hardly able to comprehend how such a thing had happened, hardly able to stomach the thought. There had been no other choice for Ros, he knew, but that didn't make it easier to bear.

What he needed, more than anything, was Ruth. She had been devastated by the news; he had watched her recoil from him in horror, had seen the way her eyes shone with tears, had seen the moment all her cheerful bravado came crumbling down. Adam and Zaf were dead, Malcolm had retired, and Ros had never been a friend to her; Jo remained Ruth's only link to her life before Cotterdam, save for Harry himself. He had sent Jo to her, had encouraged the girl to spend time with Ruth, and he knew that their friendship and Jo's gentle touch had done the lion's share of the work in convincing Ruth to come back to the Grid. He had put Jo in Ruth's path, had encouraged them to lean on one another, and just like that Jo was gone, the foundations ripped away from beneath Ruth's feet yet again. He had been unable to discuss it with her at the office, had been buried beneath the pile of distasteful responsibilities that fell to a Section Head when one of his own was lost, and so he had not reached for her, had not even tried to comfort her. The Grid was no place for the words he longed to say to her.

Perhaps she would not welcome him, would balk at the sight of him, this harbinger of doom come to light upon her doorstep, but Harry had, rather selfishly, chosen not to ring her. He had chosen to arrive at her door unannounced, in the hopes that once she saw him she would be unable to turn him away. It was unkind, he knew, but he needed to see her, and he had never been above a bit of duplicity, here and there, to achieve his own ends.

He parked his car two streets over from the safehouse and continued the journey on foot, his hands tucked in his pockets and his bent low against the evening chill. It never got any easier, losing a member of his team, another bright young life snuffed out too soon, while still he remained. It seemed that everywhere he turned he was surrounded by new faces, as the old guard faded away, one by one. He needed Ruth, now more than ever, but he was worried, truly worried, that this would be one loss too many for her to bear, so close on the heels of her more recent tragedies. If she turned away from him now, if she cast aside the hand he'd offered her and turned her back on Thames House for good and all, he wasn't sure how he would carry on.

At long last his feet brought him to her building, where happenstance allowed him to slip inside just behind a departing tenant. He made his way up to her floor, silent as a wraith, contemplating death and misery and the love he bore this woman who waited all unknowing just down the hall. He knocked upon her door with no notion of what he might say to her, how he might begin to approach this great and terrible loss, only knowing that he must, that he had to see her, hear her voice, reach for her hand in the hopes that she would not leave him, not now, not yet.

In an instant the door was opening, and there she stood, his fondest dream made flesh. For a moment Harry remained right where he was, rooted to the spot, watching this woman he loved so well, drinking in the sight of her. Ruth was wrapped in a thin pink dressing gown, her feet bare upon the floorboards, her hair damp and curling at the ends as if she'd just stepped from the bath. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat of the water but the rest of her skin was pale and smooth as starlight, and the sorrow in her eyes so all-consuming he felt he could drown in it. There was no anger in her, no accusation, but the sadness alone cut him to the quick.

"Harry," she sighed his name, and the sound of it sliced through him sharp as a knife. "Please-"

"I'm sorry," he said quickly, wondering if she knew what he meant, that he wasn't just apologizing for appearing on her doorstep unannounced, but rather for every choice he had made, every time she had tried to step away and he had drawn her back into the darkness, for the way he needed her, for the way he tried so desperately to keep her by his side, no matter how much she longed to run. "I just wanted to be sure you were all right." He kept his voice low, hoping not to frighten her, hoping that she could see him and understand just how much he cared for her.

She studied him for a moment, those huge, impossibly blue eyes wide and full of questions, of doubts; she was at war with herself, he knew, one half of her heart wanting him and the other wanting to flee. She had told him as much, that first night he'd shared her bed, had confessed the muddled mess of her emotions where he was concerned, and he had taken it in stride, counting himself lucky that any piece of her might still want him, after everything.

Ruth did not speak; she simply took a step back, her hand still wrapped around the door, making space enough for him to step into the flat with her. In two long strides Harry was by her side, the door closing softly behind them, shutting out the world beyond those walls, keeping the darkness at bay, just a little while longer. He reached behind her and turned the lock, and when that task was done, Ruth reached for his hand. With a desperate, wild hope Harry laced his fingers through hers and let her lead him through the flat, back to the little bedroom where she slept. She was not turning him away, not now, not yet, and he gave thanks for that small mercy.

As soon as they were inside Ruth stepped up to him, reaching to pick at the knot in his tie.

"I'm not sure how more of this I can stand, Harry," she said softly. She was not looking at him, her eyes focused intently on his tie instead. The weight of the moment rested heavily upon his shoulders, and so he did not push her, did not offer her lies or excuses. He reached out and caught her hips in his hands, his fingertips pressing against her through the thin fabric of her robe, searching for the heat of her in the dreary cold of that soulless flat.

"She didn't deserve this," Ruth breathed as his tie came unwound at last, as she carefully slipped it free from his collar and allowed it to land in a pile on the floor. Still she would not look at him; those nimble fingers returned to him, carefully removing his jacket and then coming back to unfasten his shirt buttons.

"None of them did," Harry said wearily, standing still and quiet as he allowed her this intimacy, allowed her to slowly remove his armor layer by layer until he was as bare as she, the truth of them both stark and undeniable in that place. His hands drifted across her waist, searching for the sash that held her robe closed.

"I'm tired," she confessed as she helped him shrug out of his shirt.

"We all are," he answered, deftly opening her robe, his hands seeking out the softness of her skin at once, palms flat against her hips, fingers curling into her as she reached for his belt. Beneath his hands she was firm and real and here and _his,_ not turning him away, not cursing him, and though he could not fathom the reason for it, he resolved to make the most of it. When his belt hit the floor he took it upon himself to remove his trousers, watching hungrily as Ruth slipped out of her robe so that she stood naked before him, her skin smelling faintly, comfortingly of lavender and vanilla and _her._

Without a word she reached for his hand once more, and they crossed the room together, sliding beneath the duvet. She was in his arms in a moment, her head pillowed on his chest, her fingertips tracing a path of fire along his side. Harry dropped a single, tender kiss against her hair.

"It'll be all right, Ruth," he murmured, shocked by the heaviness of his eyelids, by how quickly exhaustion and lassitude had overtaken him now that he was resting in her bed. There were so many things he needed to say, ought to say, should have said, but his concentration deserted him as he drifted away, the soft scent of her hair a balm to his weary soul.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Apologies for the long delay. I've been quite ill the last week or so, but I seem to be coming around, finally. A shortish chapter, to get us moving forward.**

* * *

"I've never liked Ros," Ruth whispered quietly. It seemed so wrong, somehow, to speak such a thought aloud, to give voice to the terrible anger that simmered just beneath the surface of her boundless grief. It seemed wrong to ruin this moment of peace, of tranquility, of gentle healing she shared with this man she loved so well, this man whose strong arms held her tight, this man on whose chest she rested her head, this man who tried so hard, who had already lost much. Still, though, the words spilled forth, and she could not take them back. That was happening with alarming frequency these days, she thought morosely as she closed her eyes and waited for Harry's admonishment. She could not hold her tongue around him, anymore, could not keep her thoughts to herself, could not cradle her objections close to her chest and wait to see what he would do. Their relationship had changed so much, over the last month, and there were times, moments like these, when Ruth felt quite as if she'd lost all control of herself, at least where he was concerned. Trouble was, she didn't yet know if the changes were for good or ill.

"I know," Harry sighed, dropping a kiss against the top of her head, and the gentle understanding he offered surprised her so very much that she propped herself up on her elbows, staring down at him incredulously.

"Well, think about it, Ruth," he said in an irritatingly patient sort of way. "Ros hadn't been with us for very long when you...left. She was part of the attempted coup that cost Colin his life. She was..difficult, in those early days, and she sold you down the river to Mace. I didn't like her much myself, back then."

Despite her very best attempts, Ruth found her sudden distress receding beneath the careful ebb and flow of his voice. "What changed, Harry?"

There were so many questions she had yet to find the answers to, and that had been chief among them. Ruth had returned to London to find Ros in charge on the Grid, and, perhaps most shockingly of all, doing a fine job of it. The team admired her, respected her, deferred to her, and though Ruth had not yet been given the opportunity to see Harry and Ros interacting, she had seen enough to discern that Harry's disposition towards Ms. Meyers had warmed considerably over the last few years. _How much have I missed?_ Ruth asked herself morosely as she watched her lover frown beneath her, a little line forming between his brows, a line she itched to reach out and smooth with her thumb.

"Ros did," he said simply. "She learned to be a team player. She became an invaluable asset. I trust her, Ruth, implicitly. We've been through quite a lot, over the last two years."

 _Have you now?_ She wondered. _More than what we've been through, you and I?_ It wasn't jealousy, exactly, that whispered around her heart in that moment. There was not - could not ever, would not ever be - anything romantic or even crudely sexual between Harry and Ros, and Ruth knew it. What grieved her so was the fact that Ros knew things about Harry that Ruth had yet to learn, had shared experiences with him that Ruth could never hope to understand. Harry meant so much to her, had become her lifeline, her tether, the light at the end of the tunnel of her grief, and she did not want to share him with another, did not want to release her hold on any piece of him, did not want to admit that there was anything about him she did not already know, intimately. It was silly, and childish, but he was _hers,_ as she was his, and Ruth did not want to share.

"Ros had no choice," he said, trying to soothe her, but his words had the opposite effect. Ruth shivered and rolled away from him, turning her back on him and drawing in on herself at once. Just like that any illusion that she and Harry were having a quiet little lover's chat faded away beneath the reality of the situation; Jo was dead, by Ros's hand.

"Jo would have understood that," Harry continued relentlessly, turning to curve himself around her, his left hand ghosting across her bare stomach as he sought to draw her into his embrace. "Sometimes we have to make sacrifices."

"For the greater good," Ruth said hollowly, thinking of the sacrifices she'd made, thinking of the sound of George's voice, the peal of Nico's laughter, thinking of a kiss by the riverside and a terrible scream. There was very little comfort to be found just now in thoughts of the greater good, not in this moment when grief and guilt weighed so heavily upon her. Happiness seemed a distant stranger, a friend she would never meet again. Even now, with Harry holding her close, now when she could finally feel the warmth of his skin against her bare back the way she had longed to for years upon years, she could find no piece of joy in her heart.

"Ruth," he mumurred, his lips brushing the curve of her shoulder. "Please-"

"I can't keep watching my friends die, Harry," she said softly. _How many have we lost now?_ She asked herself as she closed her eyes against the sudden rush of tears. _Too many, too many._

"I know," Harry said heavily, kissing her again. "You don't have to, Ruth. Your life is your own, you can make your own choices."

And though on some level she appreciated what it must have cost him to say such a thing, to consider, even for a moment, that she might not want to stay on the Grid with him, to find some bit of selflessness in his heart to give her his blessing should she choose to go, she could not help but feel suddenly, overwhelmingly distraught. Anger and sorrow came upon her in waves, washing over her head, sending her tumbling with no notion of which way was up. That had been the way of things from the moment she made her way back to England, and she had no notion of when - or if - she'd ever find her feet again.

"And where would I go, Harry?" she asked sharply, rolling over so that she could face him. Above her Harry looked rather taken aback by the ferocity of her response, by the flashing of her eyes, but she carried on, desperate for him to hear her, to ground her, to save her. "What would I do, if I wasn't on the Grid? Can you imagine? I'd..what, become a teacher? A medical clerk?" _Again. "_ And what happens when they come for me, Harry? What happens when I stop running, and this life catches up with me again? Who gets hurt next time? How many innocent people-"

With each question she asked Ruth's voice rose higher and higher, hysteria taking her over by inches, until suddenly Harry reached out and drew her hard against his chest, her words suddenly muffled as his movements pushed her to bury her face in his neck. His strong arms bound her, his scent enveloped her, and in that moment she could not run, could not flee, could not push him away or bury her own emotions. Ruth took one deep, shuddering breath, and then began to weep.

* * *

Ruth could not say how long it took for the great, wracking sobs to leave her, but when finally her weeping subsided she was left weak and somehow lighter than she had been before. Harry had known what she needed, known how to stem the flow of her words and simply hold her, to let her grieve in her own way without working herself up into a state. He had known, because he knew _her,_ and the thought warmed her heart. Tentatively she reached out, brushed her toes against Harry's calf, breathed a sigh of relief when he shifted and allowed her thigh to slip between his own.

"I know you feel trapped," Harry said carefully, sensing perhaps that the storm had passed. "Believe me, Ruth, I know."

Gently Ruth pressed a kiss against his neck, humming softly against his skin. Of course he understood; Harry had been trapped far longer than she, had given so much more of himself in service to their country than anyone else she'd ever known. Ruth felt as if she'd given too much of herself, been too much changed by the work she'd done on the Grid, as if she would never be fit to do anything else, to be anywhere else, and she knew that Harry understood, because he felt the same. Some of the young people working under their care would move on, find better, more lucrative positions elsewhere. Some of them would die, some of them would be fired for gross incompetence, some of them would leave, bitter and jaded, and some of them - like Harry, or Lucas, or Ruth, or even Ros - would never leave that place. _This is who we are now,_ Ruth thought, dragging the tips of her fingers along the length of Harry's spine. _We have become the shadows._

"You can do so much good, Ruth," he whispered to her softly, earnestly. "How many thousands, hundreds of thousands, of people are still alive because of the work we've done? That is the trade off. We lose friends, and family, sometimes, so that other people don't have to."

All at once, it was as if Ruth had seen straight through to the heart of Harry Pearce. He did not speak often of his personal life, and in point of fact Ruth knew she was the only person currently working on the Grid who was aware that he even had children, let alone could state their names and ages. Once, long ago, Harry'd had a wife, a family, a home to come back to, and though he tried so hard to be gruff and distant about the whole thing, in that moment there was no denying that he knew just what he had lost, that it grieved him, just as losing her family grieved Ruth. Her fingers curled against his back, her hips pressing closer to him, hungry for his proximity, wanting to comfort him, this titan of a man with his terrible duty and his poor broken heart. He lamented for the loss of his family, whatever he said, but he had reconciled himself to it. _So that other people don't have to._

"We do what must be done, Ruth. And there is no one, _no one_ , I want by my side, helping me to do it, more than you." His voice was sure and steady and full of such heat that she knew he was telling the truth, and she found herself suddenly grateful to have him here in her bed, to have his honesty and his warmth and the earnest sincerity of his voice.

"I'll be there, Harry," she whispered, her lips brushing his skin as she spoke. "God help me, but I will be there with you. Always."


	6. Chapter 6

"She convinced me to come back," Ruth murmured softly, not looking at him. Harry resisted the urge to sigh. No one knew better than he the role that Jo had played in bringing Ruth back onside. It was Harry himself who had sent the girl to her, who had gambled everything he had upon Ruth's fondness for her old friend and the manipulative capabilities of Jo's big doe eyes. Though Harry himself had called upon Ruth numerous times during that nebulous period between their rescue from the warehouse and her return to work it was not he who broached the subject of her coming back to Thames House. He had left that up to Jo, and Jo had done an admirable job.

"I know," he conceded, softly.

It was a cloudy day, but beautiful in its own way, the way that only London could be beautiful beneath a haze of grey. They had a few moments to spare, between meetings and disasters, and so Harry had brought Ruth here, to a bench by the river, to drink their tea and speak softly of old friends. Though Ruth had confessed much to him while she lay in his arms the night that Jo died, he felt there was still so much to say. There was always more to say between them, and he knew that if he were to have any chance at all of keeping her close, he would have to defy his very nature, and speak up.

"She really believed in it, what we're doing," Ruth continued, and the far-away look in her eyes terrified him. She was a creature of light and shifting shadows, was Ruth, her smile brighter than the sun but her soul gripped by turmoil, constantly assailed by a sorrow that had haunted her steps from the moment they first met, a heartbreak that only seemed to grow with each passing year, a weight he could not lift from her shoulders, much as he might long to. "More than any of us," she added softly.

"More than you?" Harry asked, his heart racing at the thought. He had believed that they'd addressed this already, in her bed in the safehouse, that she had made up her mind to stay with him, and as he watched the shifting of emotions upon her face, he realized that he had no cause to fret; she might not believe in their cause, but she was not leaving him, not yet. Still, though, the thought that _Ruth,_ Ruth who had sacrificed so much, who had lost her life, her home, her family - _twice -_ felt that Jo had been more dedicated than she was somewhat alarming. And then it struck him, with terrible clarity. Ruth might not have believed in the service, but she believed in _him._ It was a strange thought, and a heavy burden.

They were too exposed here for Harry to reach out to her, to wrap his arm around her shoulder, to twine their fingers together, to drop a kiss against her temple, and so he kept his hands firmly clasped together in his lap.

"Wasn't there something you wanted to talk to me about?" Ruth asked, carefully changing the course of their conversation, guiding them into safer territory, but for once Harry was not grateful for the reprieve. Whatever they were to one another, wherever this thing between them was going, Harry did not want to lose their connection beneath the weight of their work, did not want to shy away from her now, when they were closer than they ever had been before.

"I asked you here today because I needed to talk to you about Jo," he told her truthfully. A death like hers, unexpected, too early in life so full of promise, left so many loose ends. He wanted to talk about how it felt, to lose someone he cared for, someone he had watched grow from a wide-eyed girl into a strong woman, someone who had been a friend to Ruth, but as he watched his lover's face he realized that Ruth was not interested in pursuing such a conversation. Perhaps it hurt too much, or perhaps she had already said everything she meant to say on the subject.

"But there was something else, too," she prodded him, not unkindly.

"There will always be something else, Ruth," he answered at once. There would always be the weight of this unspoken thing between them, the longing and the love that had sent them tumbling into her bed, the grief and the guilt that had kept them apart for so long, the fear and the doubt that threatened their future even now, when things between them had been going so well. And there would always be work, looming over their heads, plots and chaos to be confounded before they were all of them ruined.

"Harry-"

"I had a strange conversation with the Home Secretary," Harry confessed, conceding defeat at once. If she did not want to talk about the personal, then he would not force her, but he could not help thinking that they could not avoid that conversation forever. For now he would content himself with unburdening the conversation he'd had with Nicholas Blake, the whispers about a potential coup among members of the intelligence community from all across the globe. If they could not work their personal troubles at least he could trust that they could do this, that they could untangle this plot and bring an end to it before it spiralled out of control.

* * *

 _Two days later_

Ruth shuffled through her new flat, taking stock of the furniture that had been delivered earlier in the day. The service had given her a small stipend with which to start her life over again, an empty gesture that she nonetheless appreciated given that she was fairly certain it was all Harry's doing. She had few enough possessions as it was; the clothes she'd bought since she'd arrived back in London, the books Jo and Harry had brought to her. In a fit of productivity she had arranged the delivery of the furniture and a few necessary odds and ends - kettle, mugs, blankets and the like - but the flat was still stark and soulless. It would take time to gather together the rest of the accoutrements that made a house a home; her old house had been full of art and knickknacks gathered from her travels, and though she understood that the lot of it had been handed over to her mother after Cotterdam Ruth was unsure how much remained, and she was dreading the inevitable reunion with her mother. Their relationship had always been strained, and she couldn't imagine what effect her death and subsequent resurrection would have on them. The longer she put off ringing her mother, however, the more it seemed to become a task too big for her to handle, a wound too great for her to reopen. Perhaps it would be better for her mother if she simply stayed dead, but even thinking it made her feel like the worst daughter in the world.

At least Harry would be bringing her cats round tonight. Ruth had missed them, and it would be nice to have some company in this dreary place. Not that she lacked for company at present; she and Harry had not spent a night apart since Jo's death. Ruth wasn't sure what that meant for them, what it said about the state of affairs - for lack of a better word - between them, but it was nice, not having to fall asleep alone.

It had been a strange few days, however, dealing with Lucas going rogue and the Sudanese bomb. Ruth had rather hoped that given how much closer they had grown, how much Harry had seemed to rely on her outside the office, that he might give more credence to her at work. Initially she had been rather disappointed, as he blew off her concerns about Malcolm's dead drop. But then she'd found the missing link, and she'd cornered him, and he had looked at her with smoldering eyes, looked at her in a way she'd come to recognize from their nights together, and told her softly, _prove it._ He had placed his trust in her, and he had done in a way that left her skin tingling. She would prove her theories, would solve any riddle, would do anything for him, and so she had rushed off, the color high in her cheeks, knowing how much more complicated everything between them had just become, and yet unable to spare a moment to consider the ramifications.

Things on the Grid had changed so much, and she was desperately trying to keep. She didn't trust Lucas, somehow, his deep voice, the way he ran off piste at the first possible opportunity, the way he seemed to operate by his own set of guidelines, separate from their own restrictions. She still didn't care for Ros, though she respected the woman's professionalism and tried to keep things cordial between them. And then there was Harry, Harry dismissing her concerns only to turn around and give her free reign, Harry handing out assignments and then quietly pulling her aside to ask her what sort of takeaway she wanted for supper, Harry who resolutely kept his hands to himself so long as they were on Grid but reached for her the moment they stepped outside. Everything was different, and Ruth couldn't tell if she were falling or flying.

"Ruth?" Harry's voice sounded from the entryway. She'd given him a key that morning; she had a spare, and she would have to turn one over to HR anyway. If they were going to continue spending so much time together, she knew she'd give one to him eventually. Ordinarily she wouldnt' have made such an overture so early in a relationship, would have agonized over giving someone else license to enter her space at will, but this was _Harry._ There was no one she trusted more than Harry.

"Coming!" she answered making her way from the kitchen to the spot where he stood, a cat carrier in each hand, and soft sounds of distress emanating from both of them.

"There's my boys!" she crowed delightedly as Harry placed the carriers upon the ground. With a bout of fiddling he opened them up, and both cats came flying out like a shot, hardly sparing a glance for Ruth before barricading themselves beneath her sofa. She sighed, the lighthearted feeling that had overcome her at Harry's arrival fading somewhat. _It's not so bad,_ she told herself. _They just need some time to adjust._

"And am I one of your boys, Ruth?" Harry asked her with a little grin, and though his tone was cheeky, there was a hope in his eyes she could not bring herself to dim. She forced herself to smile, reminding herself that the cats' response to arriving in her flat had very little to do with her, and everything to do with their distaste for travel. It was hardly an omen of things to come.

"My favorite boy," she answered, reaching up on her tiptoes to drop a gentle kiss on his cheek.

Harry beamed at her. "I've left the food in the car, I'll just be a moment," he told her. Still, he hesitated, a sort of longing in his eyes. Ruth shifted closer to him, and he took that as all the incentive he needed to wrap her in his arms, brushing her lips softly, tentatively with his own. She kissed him back, snuggled closer to him, all thoughts of food forgotten until at last he pulled away from her, resting his forehead against hers.

"The food will be cold," he said softly.

"We can't have that, can we?" she replied, kissing him one more time before stepping out of his embrace and making her way back to the kitchen.

* * *

 _I could get used to this,_ Harry mused contentedly as he leaned back in his chair, glass of wine close to hand. The food had been salvageable, and Ruth had been good company, and now they were sitting together comfortably, lingering over empty plates. It was early yet, and there was something he very much wanted to discuss with her before they trundled off to bed, but still he savored the moment. Initially he had been concerned that they could not both work together and sleep together without some facet of their relationship suffering for it, and he knew that he had made a grievous misstep in not trusting Ruth's instincts earlier in the week. It had been in his mind to think that perhaps his estimation of her professional capabilities had been colored by his affection for her, but she had proved him wrong at once, had proved herself worthy of every ounce of trust he'd placed in her. He would not make that same mistake again; there was no one he could rely on so wholly as Ruth, who bolstered him in every facet of his life.

"I had a strange conversation with Lucas today," he said finally, watching as Ruth's brows knit together in worry, as she began to fidget with her paper napkin, tearing it into strips. Lucas seemed to make Ruth nervous, for some reason that Harry had not yet discerned, but now was not the time to discuss it.

"About?" she prompted him when he did not immediately elaborate.

"Darshavin," Harry said, drinking down the rest of his wine before leaning forward to steeple his hands on the tabletop. "You recall our conversation about the HS's concerns?"

"About some kind of international coup?" her eyes were shining, more interested than afraid, now, and he could not help but think how beautiful she was.

"Yes. According to Darshavin, there was some kind of meeting in Switzerland. Western operatives, the Chinese, Russians."

"That's...quite a coalition. What is it that they're trying to accomplish, exactly?"

Harry sighed, and ran his hand over his face in frustration. "I have no idea. But apparently, Darshavin told Lucas to trust no one."

"That's always good advice," Ruth said wryly.

Harry watched her for a moment, considering. The girl she'd been before Cotterdam, before everything, never would have said anything like that. She'd been full of hope, naive, yes, but bright and gentle and kind. Time had hardened her edges, made her more like him. In some ways, he lamented the loss of her softness, but in other ways, he appreciated how well she understood him. It was a strange sort of balance.

"But I can trust you, can't I, Ruth?"

"Always," came her answer.


	7. Chapter 7

_Later that night…_

It should have come as no surprise to Ruth when their peaceful slumber was shattered by the ringing of Harry's mobile, but she had yet to adapt to this particular aspect of sharing her bed with the Head of Section D. Ruth Evershed liked her sleep, thank you very much, and each time she was woken at 2:00, or 3:00, or 4:00 in the morning by her lover's shrilly blaring mobile, she became downright grumpy. This was their time, away from the worries of their work, and yet even here they could not escape the reality of their jobs.

"Pearce," Harry growled as he answered the call. As if on reflex he reached out, his arm curving around Ruth's shoulders, drawing her to him, and she went without protest, draping one arm around his body and resting her cheek against his chest. Beneath her he was warm and soft, and the fingertips tracing patterns against the ridge of her spine were gentle. She could hear the steady thumping of his heart, and when he spoke the sound of his voice thrummed through her like the blood in her veins.

"Are you absolutely sure, Lucas?" Harry asked sharply.

Ruth's arm tightened around him, her palm flattening against his side, holding him closer to her. The little clock on her bedside table told her it was just after 2:00; there was plenty of time left for them to wrap their arms around one another and fall back to sleep, to nestle beneath her brand-new duvet and steal a few more hours' peace for themselves. Though they had only been together in this way for such a very short while, the accelerated pace of life on the Grid made Ruth feel as if the last few weeks had taken place over the course of a year, as if she and Harry had spent months holding one another, as if they had jumped over the adjustment period of any new relationship and woken up one day comfortable and happy together. Perhaps it would catch up with her, one day soon, the knowledge that she had fallen into Harry's arms so soon after the death of her last lover, that calamities in the office had prevented her from mourning Jo's death as she should have, that she and Harry were already sharing so much of themselves when they had not even really decided what they were to one another, but in the moment she was content, right where she was, and she was determined to leave her worries, and her grief, and her guilt, for another day.

Beneath her Harry sighed, and the hand that had been gently rubbing her back quite suddenly paused, and in response her heart fluttered anxiously in her chest.

"Stay on this, Lucas," Harry said. "We need a copy of that autopsy report. I don't care how, I don't care who you have to bribe or what sort of favors you have to call in. Something isn't right here, and I won't be left in the dark."

He listened intently to Lucas for another moment longer and then abruptly ended the call, tossing his mobile carelessly onto the side table. Harry did not immediately tell her what happened, remaining silent as he leaned back against the pillows, bringing Ruth to rest more firmly against him.

At the word _autopsy_ Ruth's every fear had come rising back to the surface; _who is it this time,_ she asked herself as she lay in Harry's arms. _Ros? Or Tariq?_ Somewhat selfishly she hoped it wasn't Tariq; Ruth had grown quite fond of the young man.

"Samuel Walker is dead," Harry said in answer to her unspoken question, placing a gentle kiss against the top of her head.

Ruth shifted around, lifting herself up on her elbows so that she could study his face. It was not the most handsome face Ruth had ever seen; she cared for him enough to admit that to herself. Time had not been kind to him, had scored his skin with wrinkles and left him heavier, slower than he had been in his youth, but there was still a certain beauty to the warmth of his honey colored eyes, the full pout of his lips, the jut of his chin. Ruth reached out all unthinking and placed the pad of her thumb against that chin, watched his lips move as if he wanted to speak, but thought better of it. For a long moment they stayed just like that, watching one another, Ruth's naked chest pressed hard to Harry's, her thumb against his chin, their eyes wide and open as their hearts murmured to one another in voices too soft for them to hear.

"I'm sorry, Harry," Ruth said at last.

Her lover sighed again, somewhat dejectedly, and she withdrew her hand from his face, planting a gentle kiss against his chin in the same spot her thumb had so recently vacated.

"I know you respected him," she added. That was perhaps the highest compliment Harry could pay to any foreign intelligence operative; he held the bulk of them in contempt, trusted not a one of them, outright mocked most of them, and so to earn his respect was a mark not just of competence, but of honor.

"For the first time in recent memory, I believed the CIA to be managed by a decent man," Harry told her. His hands had returned to her back, his palms pressing gentle circles against her skin, warming her through and through.

"Do they know what happened to him?" Ruth asked. Though she knew that Harry's request for the autopsy report was a likely indicator that no one knew precisely what had befallen Samuel Walker she likewise knew that Lucas must have shared _some_ details with Harry, and she was eager to hear them. She and Harry worked best when they worked together, and she knew he would sleep no more this night unless she offered him the chance to unburden himself to her.

"He fell," Harry said softly, sadly. "Inside a building the CIA use here in London. Apparently, he fell from quite a height. Lucas is looking into this for us. He's going to use his connection to Sarah Caulfield, see what he can dig up on this situation."

 _Oh, how the times have changed,_ Ruth thought, thinking of Tom Quinn and his American lover, thinking of how Harry had demanded an end to that relationship, had sought to keep them separate, and the price they all had paid, for the sake of that affair. That he should not only condone Lucas's connection to Sarah Caulfield, but encourage it, seemed an odd shift in position for a man as set in his ways as Harry. Her fingertips returned to his face, smoothing over his eyebrows, tracing the line of his cheekbones, wondering how else he had changed during the long years of their separation.

"I'm worried, Ruth," Harry whispered into the darkness. When he did not elaborate Ruth cradled his cheek in her palm, held him steady while she pressed her lips to the center of his chest.

"Tell me, Harry," she urged him gently. It would not do, for him to hold himself back from her, not now, not after everything they'd endured, and she was determined that he should speak to her, that they should work through this problem, together.

"Walker called me earlier this evening," Harry said finally. "He wanted to meet, said he had information about a meeting in Basel."

"And you think it was to do with this group the HS is so nervous about?" Ruth asked, dragging herself upright at once. They shifted together until they were both of them leaning against the headboard, Harry's arm around her, her head resting against his shoulder.

"I know it was," Harry said. "He's heard the same rumblings we have, about operatives from all over the world coming together to discuss some sort of end of days scenario. Walker might have known more, but according to Lucas, he died less than an hour after arranging to meet with me."

"They knew he was on to them," Ruth murmured. In the corners of her bedroom the shadows seemed to dance, lashing arms of darkness reaching out for her, dragging her into horror. First the Home Secretary's concerns, then Darshavin's warning, then Samuel Walker; something was afoot, and no one was to be trusted. Likely Walker had trusted one of his own people, shared his concerns, and lost his life for it. _Will Harry be next?_ She wondered.

"It seems that way, yes," Harry said grimly. "This all has an eerily familiar ring to it."

Ruth very nearly laughed aloud, but there was no mirth in her. Yes, it sounded familiar. She was reminded once more of Tom Quinn, of the plot designed to frame him for murder, to bring him to his knees. She was reminded of Jocelyn Meyers's conspiracy to topple the British government, the one that had ended with Harry held in some dingy cell, covered in petrol, seconds away from an agonizing death. Someone out there wanted to destroy them all, but Ruth had no notion of who, or why, and the thought terrified her.

"Perhaps you should talk to Ros," Ruth suggested after a time. Though she had not been back on the Grid very long and things had been rather chaotic since her return she had been trying to catch up on old files, to fill in the gaps, to learn what Harry had been up to during her exile. There was very little information about Yalta, about Ros's treachery, about the murky reappearance of Juliet Shaw, but there was enough to convince Ruth that Ros was not to be trusted. Yalta marked the second time Ros Meyers had been involved in some sort of treason, and the fact that Harry continued to place his faith in the woman concerned Ruth a great deal. Perhaps the person who had sent Samuel Walker plummeting to his death had been _his_ right hand, a friend he was certain would never lead him astray, and Ruth was determined that Harry should not meet the same fate.

"And why would I do that?" Harry asked her, his brow furrowing as he turned his head to get a better look at her.

"She may have some contacts, from the old days," Ruth said vaguely. Let Harry decide whether she was talking about Yalta or the earlier conspiracy; he never did like being backed into a corner. Much better for him to reach the conclusion on his own.

"Ruth," Harry sighed, reaching up to scrub his hands over his face wearily. "I know you don't trust her-"

"And I don't understand why you do," Ruth cut across him sharply. "How could you bring her back onto the team, after Yalta? For God's sake, she put a bug on the Grid, Harry."

"And no one else we know has ever passed along detailed information of our operations." he said pointedly.

Ruth's cheeks promptly flushed scarlet; sometimes it seemed like something that had happened in another life, those early days of her tenure on the Grid when she was passing along secrets to her old friends at GCHQ in exchange for the chance to be a proper spook. Those days were long gone, and this marked the very first time Harry had ever spoke to her of it directly.

"It's hardly the same, Harry," she said, trying to diffuse the situation, but he remained as stubborn as ever.

"I trust you, because you've proven yourself to me," he told her, reaching out to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, his touch gentle and reassuring. "And Ros has done the same. We need to work together, we can't afford to tear ourselves apart."

"You need to be careful, Harry," she told him seriously. "I can't lose you." _Not again._

"You won't," he assured her, though they both knew he was in no position to make such promises. "Come here."

And with that he pulled her to him, captured her lips in his own, and with the tender touch of his hands and the fire of his kiss he distracted her utterly, dragging her down until they were lying tangled in the duvet, too lost in one another to spare a thought for the dangers that waited for them outside the sanctuary of Ruth's bedroom.


	8. Chapter 8

There was no knock upon the door to herald her arrival, no throat clearing or rustling of paper. It was just that one moment the office was silent save for the frustrated beat of Harry's own heart as he read over the files they'd pulled regarding the latest murdered CIA officer, and the next it seemed as if the very air had shifted, as if a sudden jolt of electricity had buzzed across his skin. When he raised his head he knew what he would find, and yet he smiled softly just the same when his eyes came to rest on Ruth, leaning against the door frame, watching him with a gentle smile of her own.

It was unbelievably lovely, having her back. She had quickly found her place on the team, had once again become the most valuable asset he had on the Grid, even though she was not the most capable agent in the field. Brilliant and kind she had changed everything about his working life, again, had brought back a sense of peace that had been sorely lacking in her absence. It helped, of course, that when he looked at her now he could comfort himself with the knowledge that he would go home with her, after, that he was not watching her from inside his fishbowl and wishing for something he could never have. Everything had moved so quickly, since her return; it had only been a matter of a few weeks, but there were moments when he could almost forget that there had ever been a day when she wasn't by his side. Seeing her here, now, standing on the Grid, content if not happy, holding her during the long dark hours of the night, sharing information over candelit takeaway dinners; every moment with her was a joy, a gift he would not squander.

"Harry," she said in a voice that was designed not to carry past his ears.

"How can I help you, Ruth?" he replied, unable to stop the warmth from creeping into his voice.

It had been in his mind to worry, in the beginning, that he would not be able to keep his feelings for her a secret on the Grid. Humans are by fallible nature, and Harry himself was not immune. Surrounded by spies, people who had made a living out of studying and manipulating others, he was sure that one day he would slip, would reach for her in a moment of weakness and bring this house of cards tumbling down. And yet, so far, they had done quite well, keeping the personal and the professional separate. Ruth was not an overly demonstrative person - at least, not where other people could see - and they were so rarely alone and so rarely had an opportunity to discuss anything other than work that it had been remarkably easy to keep his distance. Yes, Ruth took her place at his right hand for the briefings, and yes, she had a tendency to finish his sentences, but she had always done that, and he was sure that if anyone were to mention it Ros would simply shrug her shoulders and say something to the effect of _that's how it's always been, nothing to worry about, they're hopeless._

"Got the time?" she asked him, a slightly mischievous look in her eye.

By sheer force of reflex Harry looked down at his watch, and was quite surprised to find his wrist bare, and his watch nowhere in evidence. He looked up sharply and found Ruth smiling at him, his watch dangling from her fingertip.

"You left in a hurry this morning," she explained quietly as she stepped into the office, and as she passed his watch over the brush of her fingertips against his palm left him feeling warm and full of hope.

"Sorry about that," he said just as quietly, slipping his watch onto his wrist.

Ruth lingered there on the other side of his desk, and it was only then that he noticed she was carrying a file with her. There was nothing unusual about that, for Ruth never came to his office without a reason, and she almost always carried a prop of some sort, some piece of intelligence or evidence she wanted to share, or a pen to twiddle between her fingertips. He had assumed that the watch was the only reason for her arrival but as he watched her now he realized that was not the case; it would seem she had another purpose.

"What is it, Ruth?" he asked. Rather alarmingly, the moment the question left his lips all traces of fond affection left her, her brow furrowing in worry and her hands twisting and turning around the file she held. Confronted with all the classic signs of a Ruth in turmoil his heart sank in his chest; surely, he told himself, this must be to do with work, surely she had not already decided that their liaison could no longer continue. It had only been such a very short while, and it had been going so damnably well.

"It's two things, actually."

"Let's start with the worst of it, then," he said, gesturing for Ruth to take a seat in the chair across from his desk. She did so at once, not ducking her head or biting her lip as she might have done in the early days of her tenure on the Grid. She was worried, deeply concerned, but she gave no sign of nervousness or insecurity, and for that Harry was deeply grateful. Ruth had always been confident in the quality of her work, but in the past she had been far less sure of her standing in his eyes; perhaps she had finally realized just how much he valued her, personally as well as professionally. Or perhaps she had finally learned that some things in life were far more terrifying than her employer's regard for her, or lack thereof.

"Ros received a phone call on her mobile two hours ago and she left the Grid without telling anyone where she was going or why."

Harry sighed, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. He understood, truly he did, why Ruth was so hesitant to trust Ros; the pair of them worked well together on the Grid, spoke to one another civilly and handled their duties with aplomb, but in the quiet moments Harry spent alone with Ruth away from this place his lover had never once hesitated to raise her concerns as regarded his Section Chief. While Harry was forced to acknowledge that Ros's past was chequered at best and downright treasonous at worst, she had proven herself to him, a hundred times over. He would suspect Lucas or Tariq over Ros, and yet Ruth refused to let it go. _That's why you need her,_ he reminded himself as he tried to marshall his thoughts, tried to prepare himself to have this conversation with Ruth yet again. _She sees the things you don't, and she isn't afraid to tell you when you're being an arse._

"Harry, you have to admit, it looks bad. If Ros were going to meet an asset she would have to log it, would have to tell someone where she's gone. And instead she just leaves? Right after an American agent has been murdered in London and all fingers point to Six?"

 _Christ,_ he thought glumly. _She has a point._

Ros had access to personnel records, intelligence, weapons, had a background working with Six, had a penchant for orchestrating anti-government coups. _But would she really go down that road again?_ He asked himself, remembering that day in the farmhouse, the terror in Ros's eyes, the shadow of Juliet Shaw; had Ros not already learned her lesson during the Yalta fiasco? Would she be foolish enough to think the third time would be the charm?

"I'll speak to her when she gets back-" Ruth opened her mouth as if to protest, but Harry cut across her smoothly - "and if I'm not satisfied with her answer, I'll put a tracker on her. Agreed?"

Ruth studied him for a long moment, and in the steely blue of her gaze he could feel himself being weighed and measured. Other Section Heads were not so easily cowed by their analysts - however pretty those analysts might have been - but Harry rarely wasted time asking himself if he put too much stock in her words. He had learned ago to trust her implicitly, in everything. Even now, in this moment when even Ros's loyalty had come into question, he would never, could never doubt his Ruth.

"Agreed," Ruth said finally, and Harry let out an unsteady breath in response.

"What was the second thing?" Ruth had come to him with a dual mission, and he was determined that she should have the opportunity to speak her mind in full, no matter how distasteful he found her news.

Ruth straightened up slightly. "I've been looking into Sarah Caulfield," she began.

* * *

She found him on the roof, after. After Ros confessed to having gone to meet Jack Coleville, after she questioned Harry about Gibraltar, after Tariq found the tracking device Jack had tricked Ros into carrying onto the Grid, after Maynard, after the bomb, after Ruth and Tariq together finally determined that Sarah Caulfield had been in the building when Samuel Walker died, after Coleville took his own life. After everything he escaped to the roof, and she followed him up there. Perhaps she could have gone home, cooked a bit of supper and fed her cats and waited for him to come to her when he was ready, but somehow Ruth could not leave him alone, not now, not after everything.

Things got like this on the Grid, sometimes. She had almost forgotten, during those sundrenched days in Cyprus, how one catastrophe could snowball into the next, the winding tendrils of discord that bound one tragedy to another, the way she could lose herself in her work and not emerge for weeks at a time. Had almost forgotten how on days like this it seemed that no one else in the world would ever understand her like the people who shared her duty, who stood beside her on the Grid. Lucas and Tariq and Harry and even Ros. Ros, who had rushed off not to plot some sort of doomsday scenario but to meet up with an old mentor, Ros who was not plotting a new world order but who had simply tried to do something kind for a man she had once respected. Ros who willingly put her own life on the line to atone for her mistakes. Oh, Ruth still didn't much care for the woman, but after today, she felt she could almost come to trust her.

 _It's a funny old world._

Because it was late, because it was dark, because it was cold, because they had sent Ros off to a hotel for the evening and Lucas had gone to sleep with the enemy and Tariq was holed up in his lair and there was no one around to see Ruth went to Harry, stood beside him and allowed him to wrap his arms around her, to rest his chin on her head and hold her close.

"Are you all right, Harry?" she asked, her voice muffled as she burrowed her face into his chest.

"I can't shake the feeling that I'm missing something," he confessed into the darkness. It was always easier, Ruth knew, to speak the truth when no one could see you.

He'd explained to her about Coleville's memoirs, about the fictitious account of his having murdered an innocent civilian in Gibraltar. He told her that he'd never even been there, and Ruth had believed him if for no other reason than that she had to trust _someone,_ and if she couldn't trust Harry, then there was no sense in her carrying on. Trust, that was all anyone seemed to talk about these days; _can we trust Sarah, can we trust Ros, can we trust Lucas, can we trust the Americans, we know we can't trust the bloody Chinese._ On and on it went, no end in sight, and danger lurking round every corner. Yes, there had been days, before, before Ruth left, before everything fell apart, when she had been afraid and full of doubt. She couldn't remember it ever being quite like this, though. She had never, for a moment, doubted Adam or Danny or Tom or Zoe. Those faces she could only dimly recall now, lost to memory as she had no photographs to keep their details fresh in her mind, looked more like the foggy paintings of the saints she'd studied in her art history course at Oxford than the faces of her friends. _How did it come to this?_ She wondered as Harry held her tight, as the cool night air whipped around them. _Where did we go wrong?_

"Are you worried about Lucas?" Ruth asked after a time, when Harry offered up no further information. He did not respond immediately, just held her that little bit tighter, and she sighed in his embrace. Sometimes he did not need to tell her what he was thinking; she knew it all too well. Harry had changed his tune, had decided that Lucas's continued liaison with the American might be to their advantage and allowed the pair of them to carry on unobstructed, but now it would seem that Lucas's paramour was at the top of the list of possible traitors. Lucas, who had spent eight years enduring torture and starvation and worse while his country did nothing to save him, Lucas whose wife had wed another in his absence, believing him to be dead, Lucas who had already endured so much had put his faith in this woman, and now, not only had she betrayed him, but the country that had abandoned him had now asked this further service of him, that he continue the charade of his relationship in order to press her for information. They took his love and twisted it, used it to their own ends.

 _Will that happen to us, one day?_ Ruth asked herself as she breathed in deep, floating away on the faint scent of Harry's cologne. Though she had not allowed herself to think too long or too hard about the depth of her feelings for Harry, though she shied away from any examination of her own heart for fear of the grief that lurked therein she knew that she cared for him, and that he cared for her, and that they had both chosen to put the realm above themselves. Would they day come when they would be asked to turn on one another for queen and country, to place the safety of the realm above the desires of their own hearts? Ros had killed Jo, in the name of taking down a terrorist, sacrificing one life in order to save many. What would happen, should she or Harry find themselves in such a position, now that they had fallen together at long last?

There were too many questions, and too few answers, and yet Ruth did not give voice to any of her concerns. Harry was here, and holding her, and they could depend on one another; it would have to do for now. She had learned long ago that asking _what if_ served no purpose in a life as chaotic and unpredictable as the one they had chosen.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: Apologies for the delay, I was caught up in preparations for moving and the actual move last weekend, but I'm all settled in now. A shortish chapter here, to move things along...**

* * *

Ruth couldn't say for certain what woke her; it was late, nearly 2:00 a.m., and she had been sleeping soundly when a sudden feeling of... _wrongness_ overcame her, and she rolled to her feet in an instant, alert and ill at ease. There was no discernible cause for her distress, no footsteps in the corridor, no banging upon the door, no shrilly ringing mobile. Only that sense that something was off, causing her heart to pound and her gaze to cast about the room wildly in the darkness.

She realized at once that she was alone; though Harry had fallen asleep with his arms wrapped around her he had apparently left her sometime before. Ruth reached out a trembling hand, her fingertips brushing against the pillow where he'd laid his head, and found it cool to the touch. How long had it been, she asked herself, since he'd left her all alone?

There was no note upon the nightstand and no message waiting for her on her phone, and so she could be reasonably certain that he was still in the house, somewhere. Ruth padded across the room on silent feet, stopping to retrieve Harry's white shirt from the corner where he'd tossed it earlier in the evening, carefully buttoning it up to cover her nakedness before she ventured forth in search of him.

For the very first time since this...whatever it was between them had begun, Ruth was spending the night at Harry's. The cats would be all right left unattended for the evening, but Harry was in need of a clean suit for the morning and had offered to cook her dinner in exchange for spending the night at his. The thought of a home cooked meal had been sufficient to lure Ruth away from the comforts of her new flat, and so she had graciously agreed. The house was everything she had expected it to be; warm, expensive wooden furniture, a healthy collection of classical records and an even healthier collection of scotch, and very little in the way of personal touches. It was soulless, in a way, as comfortable as an expensive hotel and as anonymous, but there were a few small details there for Ruth to see that screamed his name; the Zeppelin album sandwiched between the Vivaldi and Chopin, the small photo of Catherine tucked away on the bookshelf, a mug that Ruth had given him one year for Christmas sitting on the side in the kitchen. The house reflected the way that Harry had lived his life, keeping everything close to the chest and yet allowing those he trusted, those he cared for most, a small window into his heart. Ruth was grateful for the trust he placed in her, for the gift he'd given her, in bringing her here tonight, in saying without words that she was welcome to every piece of him, to whatever she wanted of him.

As gentle, as kind as such a thought was, however, it raised a rather alarming question for Ruth. What exactly did she want from him? As she made her way down the corridor, slipping down the stairs as quietly as she could, she tried, not for the first time, to wrap her mind around this new state of affairs between them. They had no spoken understanding, had made no declaration of feelings or commitment or intention, and yet neither of them seemed willing to part from the other, even for a single evening. As each day brought with it further calamity, further doubt, they were relying more and more heavily on one another, and yet they had not acknowledged in the daylight hours what they were to one another in the dark. Technically such a relationship should have been reported to the higher ups, and yet though Ruth was naked beneath the shirt she'd peeled from Harry's shoulders only a few short hours before she found herself wondering if what they were sharing was, in fact, a relationship.

 _Does it matter,_ she wondered as she continued her search for him, _what we call it? Does giving it a name change the way we feel?_

That question, of course, led to other, even more uncomfortable inquiries, such as what exactly Ruth's feelings were when it came to the man who shared her bed, and so it was that she was somewhat relieved to discover him in his study; speaking to him would, she hoped, distract her from her muddled thoughts, from the tide of guilt that swirled and eddied around her feet, from the memory of her own cries of grief as she watched George fall to his knees on the video screen, the memory of her own cries of satisfaction as Harry buried himself inside her just over a month later.

"Harry," she spoke his name softly, her voice hardly more than a whisper, and yet loud enough to carry to where he sat. At the sound of her voice he spun in his chair, smiling that sad, gentle smile of his as he took in the sight of her leaning there in the doorway dressed in nothing but his shirt.

"I'm sorry, did I wake you?" he asked.

* * *

"No," Ruth sighed, and in that gentle sound he heard a world of sorrow. She was so lovely, her feet bare upon the floorboards, her hair adorably mussed, the hem of his wrinkled shirt brushing invitingly against the tops of her thighs. She had always been pretty, his Ruth, but now it seemed to him that she grew more radiant each time he looked at her, as if with each new heartache, each new trouble she endured a new facet of her beauty was revealed to him. Perhaps, he mused as he watched her now, such was the nature of love, that with each new discovery made about his beloved his heart was bound more and more securely to hers, never to be torn asunder.

"Is there anything I need to know?" she asked, her eyes narrowing slightly as he remained rooted to the spot, wrapped in his dressing gown and utterly entranced by her.

It was Harry's turn to sigh, reaching up to scrub his hands over his face. _Yes_ , there was something she needed to know, a new development as regarded the death of Samuel Walker and the burgeoning threat of the mysterious meeting in Basel; Harry dearly longed to forget about those troubles, to lose himself in Ruth, in the warmth and the softness of her, but she was a vital part of his team, and he knew that she deserved the truth, now, deserved to have her questions answered, however distasteful he found those answers. At the sound of his distress Ruth straightened up and crossed the room, coming to stand in front of him, stepping into the space between his knees, her hands landing upon his shoulders. There was no other choice for him in that moment but to reach out and catch her hips in his hands, to look up at her, to gaze in wonder upon her face, the soft, smooth skin revealed above the buttons of the shirt she wore, the sight of her, the scent of her enough to calm his battered heart.

"I had a call from Ros," he confessed. "Lucas seems certain that Sarah killed Walker."

Ruth made a soft sound of surprise, her impossibly blue eyes widening slightly at the implications of this news.

"Does Sarah know that Lucas suspects her?" Ruth asked, and Harry had to marvel at that, for a moment, at the way Ruth had thought first and foremost of Lucas's safety, rather than their mission. She had always been something of a mother hen, his Ruth, comforting and protecting her team, guiding the younger agents and offering support to the more seasoned staff, and he lost himself for a moment in a dream of Ruth with a child of her own cradled in her arms.

And yet she had no child, had lost her stepson and perhaps her only chance at a real family for his sake, for the sake of the love he bore her. They would have to talk about it eventually, he knew, about what she had lost, about what she wanted for her future, but he could not bear to face those questions now, to confront the elephant in the room, to burst the beautiful cocoon of warmth and affection they had spun around themselves here in his home, and so he tried to focus, not on what should have been, what could have been, but rather what _was._

"Lucas thinks he's safe, for now, but he's going to have to show his hand eventually. We need to unsettle Sarah. If she killed Walker she's part of a much bigger conspiracy. I need to know who she's working with, and what they're really after. I'll leave it up to Lucas to determine how best to approach her; he's the one who knows her, knows the way she thinks, how she operates."

He looked up at Ruth then, this woman who stood with the bare skin of her thighs brushing against his knees, her hands gently kneading the tension from his shoulders, and in her eyes he saw the words she could not yet bring herself to say. _As I know you,_ he heard her voice echoing in his mind. Yes, Ruth knew him better than anyone else, just as Lucas no doubt thought he knew his Sarah, and yet Sarah had betrayed her lover, her country, her very principles. A question seemed to pass between them, there in the stillness of his home so late at night, a question asked and answered in his hands ghosting across her hips, her fingers curling in his hair, their eyes that searched one another, caught, held.

 _Would you betray me, my love?_

 _Never._

"Come to bed, Harry," Ruth murmured. Harry caught her wrist in his hand and lifted her hand to his lips, pressing a gentle kiss to her palm, wondering if now was the time, if now, more than two years after he'd last tried to confess his love to this woman the moment had come for him to finally speak that truth aloud to her. What would Ruth say, he wondered, should he tell her how he loved her, how he never wished to be parted from her, how these last few weeks they'd spent together had been more beautiful than any dream, had filled him full of hope and wonder? Would she flee from him, as she had done before, or would she slip her hand into his, and confess the depth of her own affection? Was he brave enough to find out?

"Harry?" she asked, curious when he did not immediately rise to his feet.

"I'm coming," he answered quickly, allowing her to lead him from the office and back to the bed they would share for the evening, and hopefully for many more to come.

 _Not yet,_ he told himself as he dropped his dressing gown on the floor, as he slipped beneath the duvet and wrapped Ruth in his arms. _Soon, but not yet._


	10. Chapter 10

Somehow, miraculously, they enjoyed the rest of the night uninterrupted by the ringing of the mobile, and when Harry's seldom-used alarm clock began to cheerily herald the coming of a new day he was still wrapped up in his bed, safe and warm with Ruth in his arms. Beside him his lover groaned and buried her head further into the pillows while he reached out and turned the damn thing off, chuckling a little to hear her so grumpy first thing upon waking. Most mornings he was gone well before she woke, rushing to the office to avoid calamity or rushing home for a clean suit, but today they were blessed with an opportunity to enjoy one another's company just a little while longer, and he was determined to enjoy it.

In the satisfying silence that followed in the wake of the alarm Harry smiled, and pressed a kiss against Ruth's bare shoulder, curling his arm that much tighter around her. This earned him a little hum of appreciation from deep in the back of her throat as she turned her head on the pillow, dark hair spilling all around her while her eyelashes fluttered until at last she could stare at him sleepily. It would be a lie to say that those eyes were the first thing Harry noticed about her, when he met Ruth all those years before, the day she came to interview for the job at Thames House. The very first thing he had noticed about her had been her billowing brown tiered skirt and the way the pattern on her blouse clashed so outrageously with the plaid of her blazer. He had taken in the garish outfit and the chunky jewelry and the thick makeup and thought with some distaste that this woman could not possibly stand a chance of surviving the life of a spy; spies by nature must blend in, and everything about her was ostentatious. But then he had remembered his courtesy and reached out to shake her hand and the next thing he knew he was staring into those eyes, deep and brilliantly blue and knowing and sad, and he'd felt rather as if the breath had been knocked right out of him. No, he had not noticed her eyes first, but he remembered discovering them more fondly than almost anything else.

"Good morning," he murmured, leaning forward to brush a gentle kiss against her lips.

She hummed again, eyelids fluttering closed though a smile lingered around the corners of her mouth.

"Do we have to go?" she asked in a tone that was likely meant to be petulant but came across satisfied instead.

"I'm afraid we do," he answered her. "But not yet."

Her eyes snapped open at once, for as he spoke to her his hand drifted down the length of her spine, cresting the swell of her bum, fingers gently teasing between her legs for a moment.

"How much time do we have?" she asked softly, her gaze dancing across his face, her breath hitching slightly as he stroked her tenderly, carefully gauging her reaction.

"If we skip breakfast, we have half an hour before we need to be in the shower."

Ruth grinned and reached back, tossing the duvet aside and revealing herself to Harry's hungry gaze. "I don't think we need to worry about breakfast, do you?" she asked breathlessly.

* * *

Ruth had never been particularly fond of mornings, but she rather felt she could grow to like them, if every one began this way. She had always known somewhere in the back of her mind that Harry cared for her - that he loved her, even, regardless of whether or not she ever let him say the words aloud - and he showed the depth of his feelings for her in the way he touched her, held her, kissed her, rocked her to the core. The brush of his fingertips was always tender, his eyes always wide and adoring, and in the strength of his arms, beneath the heat of his body, she felt safe, treasured, protected. That warm feeling of security, of knowing and being known, having a place where she could be entirely herself, free to follow the desires of her heart, left her full of, if not joy, contentment. The world outside was dark and cold, but Harry's bed was warm, and the memory of what they shared there became a talisman for her to cling to when the chaos of their lives threatened to overwhelm her. He had, without even knowing it, calmed her frantic heart, had eased the worries that had filled her the night before. Perhaps they had not given a name to what they were to one another, but Ruth came to a decision that morning as they shuffled around one another in the shower. It did not matter what words they used - or didn't, as the case may be - she knew what he meant to her. He meant everything.

"We may have enough time to pick up a croissant from the cart," Harry was saying as he leaned in the bedroom doorway, knotting his tie while he watched her hopping from one foot to the other, tugging on her boots.

And it was not until that very moment that Ruth realized he intended for them to go into work together.

If he had made such an overture to her three years before, so blandly announced his attentions to bring her into work with him without even checking to see what her thoughts were on the matter, she might well have run a mile. Faced with the possibility of everyone they worked with, everyone whose opinion of her mattered discovering that she was shagging the boss the old Ruth would have panicked, and bolted for safety. Now, though, she took a moment to look at him, to try gauge his state of mind, and as she did she smiled. He probably hadn't even thought it through, poor man; he was smiling at her, that soft, besotted smile he reserved for her and her alone, and she knew in that moment that all he wanted was to stay by her side, not to make any grand declarations or stake his claim but to enjoy her company, just a little while longer.

And when he was looking so very handsome in his suit, his hair still slightly curly from the steam of the shower, that smile upon his face, Ruth's body still tingling, just a little, from his attentions, she knew she wanted the same. It was early still, and while a few people might be on the Grid, it was likely that only Ros or Lucas would take note of their arrival. And neither of those two would ever say a word about it, Ruth knew; likely they would not even bat an eyelid, would assume - rightfully so - that Ruth and Harry had been together all the while. What could it hurt, she asked herself, to stay with him, to avoid the perils of the tube at rush hour and instead cross the city in the comfort of Harry's chauffeur-driven car, stopping to pick up a croissant at the cart before leisurely walking into the office? What could it hurt, to be happy just a little while longer?

"That sounds nice," she said decisively.

* * *

They were mostly quiet, as they drove along. His driver, Mike, might well have been deaf as a post, for he had overheard all sorts of conversations from the backseat of that car, and never spoke a word about it. He knew Harry would have his head on a pike if he ever did, and apparently valued his job more than any reward he might possibly receive for airing his employer's dirty laundry.

There was a question Harry very much wanted to ask Ruth, however, and it was far more personal than discussions of terrorists or international coups in the intelligence community. He couldn't quite think of a good way to broach the subject, however, and so he let Ruth chatter on for a time, pondering his predicament while still trying to follow the thread of the conversation.

"It needs to be Ros on this one, Harry," Ruth was saying. "Lucas is too close to Sarah, and she's the one the Americans have chosen to represent their side. And besides, Baisley's skittish, he might respond better to two women."

Harry grunted. "He doesn't know our Ros very well then," he said. Ruth smiled at him softly, and on impulse he reached out and twined their fingers together, liking very much the way she let him bring their hands to rest against his thigh, the little blush that rose in her cheeks.

She was discussing their latest op, a joint attempt with the Americans to ferret out the names of terrorists and other unsavories who had stashed their cash in a massive, shady bank. Money laundering was not his area of expertise, but even Harry knew that more mob bosses were brought down by tax evasion than by murder charges. The HS had intimated that this particular endeavor was very important to him and had in fact arranged a meeting with Harry later that morning to discuss it, and so banks and Baisley had become the order of the hour.

"You're right, though," he agreed. "It should be Ros. I'll speak to her when we get in, see if she and Sarah can meet with Baisley today. The sooner the better."

Ruth hummed, eyes sparkling, and settled back into the seat beside him. She was always happiest, he'd found, when they were working together, when they were on the same page, finishing one another's sentences and anticipating one another's needs. They'd had quite a lot of practice at that, over the years, and the newfound intimacy between them had only served to strengthen those bonds.

* * *

"Two almond croissants, please," Harry said as he reached the front of the queue at the little cart by the water's edge.

"And a coffee," Ruth piped up beside him.

"And a coffee," he added. Ruth relayed her order to the man behind the cart and then stepped away, turning her face up to the morning sun and smiling, just a little, while Harry paid for their breakfast and then collected it.

"Do we have time to sit for a moment?" Ruth asked as she accepted the croissant and the coffee.

"For a moment," Harry agreed, and as one they turned and made their way to a little bench. They settled down together, sitting side by side; Ruth turned towards him, their knees brushing, her breakfast perched precariously on her lap while she took a long sip from her paper cup. And in that moment, her hair shining in the sunlight, her face content, her body warm and so close to his own, Harry could not stop himself from asking the question that had been plaguing him all morning.

"Would you like to have dinner with me one night?" he asked, the words spilling out of him all in a rush.

Ruth almost choked on her coffee. "I'm sorry?" she responded when she caught her breath.

Harry felt rather as if he had been somehow transported back through time, back to that rooftop, back to a moment of innocent, boundless hope, to the days before everything between them had grown so dark. They had secrets now that they had not carried then, griefs and fears that they had not spoken to one another, but they had come so bloody far, and things had been going so bloody well, and he could not help but hunger for more.

The expression on Ruth's face told him all too plainly that she had experienced the same sort of déjà vu, for her eyes went wide and then softened, slightly, as she watched him. In that moment she was warm and gentle and beautiful, lovelier today than she had been yesterday, and lovelier still than she had been three years earlier, an enigma, a vision, the dearest longing of his heart.

"If you'd like to, of course," he said, finishing their little scene.

"Harry," she started to speak, but he cut her off at once, prepared for her to protest, to decline, to turn from him and run.

"I have enjoyed every moment we've spent together, Ruth," he told her earnestly, "but I would like very much to take you somewhere that isn't work or home. We deserve some time, don't we, to just be...normal?"

"Nothing about you and I will ever be _normal_ , Harry," she told him. His heart sank, but before he could be too disappointed she was moving, balancing her drink on the bench beside her so that she could reach out and take his hand in her own.

"But I'd love to have dinner. Together."

Her smile was gentle and knowing, and there was nothing for it then but for him to reach out and kiss her once, a fleeting caress but one he hoped might go a long way towards telling her just how much her acceptance meant to him.

"Good," he said, clearing his throat, taken aback somewhat by his own forwardness. "That's good."


	11. Chapter 11

"I'm sorry, Ruth," Harry murmured, his voice low and his eyes troubled as they sat together in his office. "I think we may need to cancel our dinner reservations."

Ruth fought the urge to reach across his desk, to place her hand on his forearm and give him a gentle squeeze. She had known this was coming, somehow; the op with Baisley had gone tits up, as the agents who had been watching Ryan Baisley had come under attack and the man himself was nowhere to be found. The HS had been adamant that their investigation take top priority, for reasons that Harry had only darkly hinted at. Ruth knew she could not begrudge him his secrets, and likewise she knew that should they continue on their present course they both had a lifetime's worth of cancelled dinner plans and missed opportunities to look forward to. Service before self, that was the nature of their work, and no one understood this better than Ruth, save for Harry.

"Reschedule, Harry," she told him softly. "Don't cancel."

He offered her a tired smile in response, and for a moment Ruth indulged in her fondness for that smile, and for the man who wore it. Theirs was not a normal life, and somewhere deep in her heart Ruth knew they did not deserve such a blessing, to sit down to quiet meals at the same time every day, to go years between attending funerals for dear friends, to go on holiday and laugh with their neighbors. They had done too much, seen too much, lost too much to ever be content with such domesticity, but slowly they were finding their way, forging their own path, one that made sense for two tired old spooks, and she was quite enjoying it. At least, she was enjoying it too much to let something as small as a single ruined dinner ruffle her feathers.

"I have to meet with the Home Secretary," Harry told her, and so she rose to her feet, prepared to depart. "But I'll reschedule for Friday."

She took a moment to study him, the warmth, the hope in his honey-brown eyes. That was one of many things she had come to treasure as a result of their continued dalliance, the spring in Harry's step, the gentleness of his attitude, the proud lift of his chin. He was happy, now, as happy as he could be, and Ruth knew it was because of her, if only because she had seen it before, when she'd accepted his dinner invitation all those years before, had seen his pride, his confidence, his joy, had seen how it all faded away when she refused him. They were better together, stronger together, and she was slowly finding her way through, coming to terms with this sudden upswell of happiness despite the grief and the guilt and the fear she still carried. Theirs was a life of contradictions, but it was the life they had chosen, and Ruth knew they could not change it now.

"Good," she answered.

And that was that.

* * *

 _The next night_

The Grid was quiet, as the dust settled in the wake of the Baisley fiasco. Ros had gone spectacularly off the rails, but she had kept the man alive, and they had obtained his information, though it had cost his partner and her child their lives, though Baisley himself had been broken in the process. Those circumstances had given Ruth pause, had reminded her of what she herself had lost, only a few months before, and in the aftermath she had been quiet and pensive. There was little time for her to sort through her feelings, however, for elsewhere things were coming to a head.

Sarah Caulfield's involvement in Nightingale, Lucas's insistence that he be allowed a chance to deal with her, to try to reason with her, and the sudden firing of the long time Home Secretary Nicholas Blake; all of it had come crashing down so quickly that the team was left reeling in the aftermath. Nightingale, that shadowy, amorphous hydra that had begun with a meeting in Basel, was foremost in everyone's minds. They'd almost certainly been behind the attempt to silence Ryan Baisley, in an effort to protect their accounts at the bank whose secrets he had finally divulged. Nightingale was behind the murder of Samuel Walker, the last honorable American at Grosvenor Square, and now Ruth was fairly certain they were behind the coup that had deposed Nicholas Blake. The pieces were moving, but Section D could not see the board, and that made planning their defense almost impossible. So many questions lingered, and Ruth could not see her way through the tangle.

As she always did in times of such trouble she rose to her feet, and made her way to Harry's office, watching the news on the telly and waiting for him to come back to her. She wanted to be there for him, knowing how difficult this was for him, and she wanted to draw comfort from his presence as well.

"Are you ok?" she asked him softly, watching the furrow in his brow, the tension in his posture as he made his way into the office. Though Blake had once tried to have him killed she knew that Harry respected the man, that they had worked well together, and she could not help but worry for him, having to lose another trusted colleague so soon. It felt rather as if Harry himself were under attack, as if soon he would be the last man standing, and then Nightingale might set its sights on him. It was a troubling thought.

"I'm angry. More with myself than anything else. I should have known it couldn't last. A decent politician? Someone wanted him out and I need to know who."

He was right, of course. There was something bigger, more frightening at play here, someone pulling the strings who possessed a great deal of power, knowledge, and resources. They would have their work cut out for them in the coming days, trying to unravel all of it. It seemed to Ruth that they may have to cancel their dinner reservation after all; who knew when they might next have the time to enjoy such an indulgence?

But Harry wanted to take her out, wanted to try, in his own way, to give them a proper relationship, and she did not want his efforts to go unrewarded. And so, drawing on all the courage and confidence she could muster, she took a deep breath, and spoke.

"Harry," she said. "Do you want to get a drink?"

"Yes, I think I do, Ruth," he answered without missing a beat, rising to his feet at once.

* * *

Tariq waylaid them on their way out the door, but though his news was troubling, it was not something that either Harry or Ruth could address in the moment, and so Harry had placed his hand at the small of Ruth's back and shuffled her off the Grid as quickly as he could. Nightingale had been tipped off about the seizures at the bank and moved all their funds to Pakistan, and Tariq was working on tracing the money, but he worked best in the still dark hours of the night, and Harry was all too happy to leave him to it. Ruth had thrown him a lifeline, and he was not about to toss it away.

So it was that they found themselves tucked into a corner booth at the pub down the street from Harry's house where he sometimes sipped his whiskey on nights when he had no interest in playing politics at the club. The room was dimly lit and the other patrons were slowly filing out, leaving Harry and Ruth in relative solitude as they lingered over their drinks and a bit of greasy pub food.

Now was not the time, he knew, for further discussion of work. It had been his intention, when he'd asked Ruth to dinner, that they spend some time together not pouring over Nightingale and all the possible avenues of their own imminent destruction. It had been his intention that they might talk quietly together of themselves, of what they had become, of what they wanted to be. Though the removal of Nicholas Blake and the revelation of Sarah Caulfield's treachery weighed heavily on his mind, on this night he wanted, very much, to set aside the part of himself that was head of Section D, and simply be Harry, a man talking to the woman he loved.

There were so many questions he wanted to ask her, so many things he wanted to tell her, but in the moment he was having some difficulty deciding where to start. She was beautiful, sitting across the table from him, her hair curling softly about her face, her blue eyes shining in the darkness all around them. She was beautiful, and real, and _here,_ and when they'd finished their drinks - if he didn't completely cock everything up - she would fall asleep in his arms, and he was so bloody grateful for it that he almost could not bring himself to speak, so frightened was he of losing this wondrous gift he'd only just discovered.

They _had_ to talk, though, he knew. The way Baisley had lost his partner and child had brought it all back up again, and Harry knew he would have to broach the subject with Ruth. Her wounds were still raw, still fresh, and he worried that she had not had the time to properly consider what they were doing, that one day soon the reality of the situation would come crashing down on her and she would be ripped from his side. He could not bear the thought of such a loss. Much better, he told himself, to deal with it now, to face head on everything he feared, rather than wait for those fears to drown him.

"Ruth," he began, running one finger around the rim of his whiskey glass, "I have to ask."

Her eyes flickered to his face, her expression more guarded, more wary than it had been in his presence for some time now. He understood all too well why she might be mistrustful of questions for he was himself, but if they were to survive together, he knew they would have to endure some uncomfortable conversations.

"About George," he began, but he stopped at once as Ruth visibly paled, dropping her gaze and reaching for her glass with a trembling hand. His heart broke to see her thus, to know that she was still in pain, that he was exacerbating it, but he needed to know. "I'm worried about you, Ruth," he told her earnestly. "It hasn't been very long-"

"And you think I have some sort of breakdown coming?" she asked quietly. "Like Ros today?"

There was anger simmering softly in her voice and ice in her gaze, but Harry stood firm before her, determined that they would survive this conversation intact. "No," he allowed, "that wouldn't be your way." No, his Ruth would never do what Ros had done, kidnap a prominent banker, torture him for information, run off on her own half-cocked in a desperate bid to save some whinging piece of filth from his own stupidity. Ros broke in thunder and lightning and righteous indignation, but Ruth would shatter quietly, he knew, a spiderweb of fractures running through her soul until she could no longer bear the weight of her grief and guilt. He wanted more for her than that, wanted to help her, to support her, if she would let him, wanted them to move on together, but they had to cross this bridge first, and he was unsure of his footing.

"Harry-"

"You lost your family, Ruth."

There was a shocking, sudden sort of silence that followed his words; Harry was fairly certain that neither of them was breathing. She was watching him, still as a stone, her eyes huge and round and impossibly blue, those full lips set in a hard line. Ordinarily he could tell with a single glance exactly what she was thinking, what she was feeling, this woman who wore her heart on her sleeve, but it would seem that her time in exile had taught her a thing or two about schooling her features, for in the moment she gave nothing away. Not for the first time he rather felt as if the Ruth who had returned to him was another woman altogether, as if he were having to start their acquaintance all over from the beginning, to forget every lesson he had learned in previous years and somehow come to grips with this new reality.

"No, Harry," she told him, and the strength, the resolve in her voice soothed his racing heart at once. There was no anger in her now, though it had flared within her only a moment before. She was as changeable as a seawind, was Ruth, but he loved her just the same. "I...cared for George, very much, and Nico was a good boy, but they weren't my family. It was a dream. Nothing more. I'm sorry for what happened to George. I'm sorry he ever met me. I'm sorry Nico is an orphan. But being sorry doesn't change what happened. And being angry at you…" she shook her head, took a deep breath. "Being angry at you didn't make me love you any less."

Harry felt rather as if he had been caught in some sort of explosion. He was certain that his ears were ringing, and he knew he wore a somewhat bemused expression, but he could do nothing to change it. Ruth had just rather casually told him that she loved him, and the momentousness of the occasion left him utterly lost for words. She _loved_ him.

For years now he had carried his love of her in his heart, had treasured it, had sheltered it, had nurtured that love through every calamity he had endured with and without her, but this remained the very first time she had ever told him so plainly that his feelings for her were returned. Oh, they had been sleeping together for quite some time, now, but love was not a prerequisite for sex, in Harry's experience, particularly not in the wake of trauma. That she should not only love him, but that she should love him enough to say it out loud, shook him to his very foundation.

"Harry?" The quiet sound of her voice roused him from his sudden stupor, and he stared at her then, as if seeing her for the very first time.

"Ruth," he breathed her name in a tone of wonder.

She smiled, a sad, enduring sort of smile, and reached for his hand, threading their fingers together on the tabletop.

"Take me home, Harry," she said.

And so he did.

* * *

 **A/N: I am afraid life has suddenly got very busy, and there won't be another chapter until next week.**


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: A short-ish chapter to get things moving; the beginning of this chapter is M rated.**

* * *

In all the weeks since their dalliance had begun Harry had never before seen Ruth quite like this. Above him she was transcendent, her skin flushed and glowing, a faint sheen of sweat setting her to sparkling diamond bright and overwhelming. Onward she moved, graceful as a ship at sea, riding the cresting swell of her abandon while he was powerless to do anything but watch, his hands clenched hard around her hips, holding her steady while she drove them both ever nearer to the brink. She was warm and soft and perfect, more beautiful than he could ever have imagined before this moment. With her hands pressed hard to the plane of his chest she kept herself steady, her head cast back on her shoulders, soft, dark hair brushing against her skin while the column of her throat, smooth and elegant, called his name. With every thrust of their hips his eyes followed the swaying swell of her breasts, and quite suddenly he found himself overcome with the need to taste her.

Quickly he shifted, never releasing his hold on her hips while he sat up, pulling her down hard against him so that he was still buried deep inside her though now their eyes were on the same level.

Ruth was panting, softly, her body trembling from exertion and from euphoria, her eyes so brilliantly blue that Harry was almost struck dumb by the sight of them. With both hands he reached out, brushed her hair back from her face before cradling her cheeks in his palms.

"I love you," he murmured, his voice rough but earnest. It was only fair that after the risk she had taken in confessing her love of him that he do the same, that he speak aloud the words he had been treasuring in his heart for more than two years now.

"Harry," she breathed, but whatever words she intended to speak next were lost as Harry captured her lips with his own, kissing her feverishly, desperately, deliberately, his hands tracing the curve of her body, encouraging her to move against him. Once more she took up her familiar rhythm, breaking their kiss with a gasp as he slid deeper and deeper inside her. She flung her arms out behind her, leaning back in search of leverage, and the change in angle between them drew a strangled groan from Harry's lips. She clutched him, held him, overcame him, and he was powerless to resist her. The unrelenting, glorious undulation of her hips, the beauty of her body, the knowledge that she loved him, as he loved her, was nearly enough to finish him off on the spot, but he had not drunk his fill of her, and so as she moved he lowered his head, catching one tight-furled nipple between his teeth, lavishing all of his attentions upon her breast until she was mewling with want. Still she moved, and with each thrust he felt the fluttering of her inner muscles around his rock-hard length, felt the approaching cataclysm and consigned himself to the flames. With his lips upon her breast he reached down to the place where they were joined, and with an ease born of practice he sent her careening from the edge.

At the last moment Ruth lifted herself up, flung her arms around his neck and brought him as close to her as she could, grinding down against him until she was lost, whimpering her release against his skin. She surrounded him utterly, warm arms against his shoulders and back, warm thighs wrapped around his hips, warm chest pressed flush to his own, her sex tight and fluttering around him, and with the sound of her ecstasy in his ears and the soft scent of her hair invading his senses he gave himself over to her, letting his own release wash over him with a groan of bone-deep satisfaction.

While she shivered and shook against him his hands traced nonsense patterns against the soft skin of her back, his heart hammering in his chest, a sense of peace such as he had never known washing over him in waves. Somehow they had made it through, together, had managed to defeat the many obstacles in their path and embrace their feelings for one another, and Harry was so bloody grateful that he could have wept, but he lacked the energy.

"I love you," Ruth whispered breathlessly, her lips brushing against his neck as she spoke. "I love you."

* * *

It was some time later, after they had regained control of themselves, after Ruth had slipped off to the loo for a bit of cleanup while Harry turned down the sheets. She lay with her head propped up against the pillows, scrolling through the messages on her phone with one hand while with the other she ran her fingers through his hair. Harry's head rested against her stomach, the softness of her skin beneath his cheek and the tender touch of her hand lulling him to sleep faster than he would like to admit.

"Harry," Ruth said in a tone that worried him, somewhat; her voice was low and soft, but troubled, too. He hummed, pressing a kiss against her stomach, waiting for the worst of it.

"What are we going to do about Sarah Caulfield?"

He heaved a great sigh, but made no move to leave his sanctuary. It would be so easy, he knew, to turn his head, to shimmy down her body and with lips and tongue distract her from all thoughts of work, but she was his right hand, his champion, the one person he could trust above all others, and he knew that she was right to ask. They could enjoy these precious few hours they stole for themselves, but they had a responsibility to do more, to be more than just two people in love. They had a country to defend.

"I don't know," he began slowly. "I could strangle Lucas, for letting her go."

"He was trying to earn her trust," Ruth murmured placatingly, her fingers still running through his hair. "He got more information out of her once he disabled the coms. She never would have confessed if she knew she was being recorded."

"And without a recording her confession is all but useless," Harry grumbled.

"Not quite," Ruth fired back, and though he had closed his eyes while they spoke he fancied he could hear her smile. "She told Lucas the truth. She was at the meeting in Basel, she ran the account at Dewitts, she killed Walker, she moved the Nightingale money before we could seize it, she killed that man at her flat, and now she's done a runner. We have her, Harry. We just need to find her before…"

Ruth's voice trailed off, tinged with an uncertainty Harry felt echoed in his own heart. Before what? What was Nightingale planning? What had they discussed at the meeting in Basel, what had required the millions of pounds they'd stashed in Dewitts and then transferred to Pakistan? The possibilities were endless, one calamity after another, no way to predict what would be the final move, no way to defend against it.

"We have to find her, Ruth."

It was her turn to sigh. "But how? Lucas didn't see her leave. She left her mobile behind. Her accounts are closed, and the cousins are as clueless as we are."

"You think she took the first flight to some island paradise?" Harry opened his eyes, studying his lover's face as she pondered his question. She really was beautiful, this love of his. Everything about her enchanted and enthralled him, soothed his battered heart and filled him full of hope. She had endured so much loss, so much grief, so much pain, so much of it for his sake, but she was still here, in his bed, holding him, loving him, working with him, and he could think of nothing better in all the world than sharing his life with her.

"I don't think she's finished here, Harry," Ruth said at last. "Nightingale is an international conspiracy but they kept their money here, and this is where it first began to unravel. Whatever they're planning, I think it will start in London."

That was a troubling thought. She was right of course, his brilliant Ruth. She always was. But it was late, and he was tired, and he knew that they would find no more answers this night.

"Come on," he said, pressing one last kiss against her stomach before lifting himself up, shuffling around until he could lie beside her and draw her into his arms. Ruth cast her mobile down upon the side table and turned out the light before resting her head against his chest, one arm flung out around his waist, nestled tight in his embrace. "We'll sort it out in the morning," he told her.

"I love you, Harry," Ruth said, her voice already heavy with exhaustion. .

"Sleep now, Ruth," he answered.

And so she did.


	13. Chapter 13

Another day, another terror cell, another calamity, another horror. It never bloody stopped; the nights were calm and peaceful, as Ruth lay nestled in Harry's embrace, but they were all too brief, and all too often cut short by news of some new disaster. On this particular day, it was a group of Hindu nationalists hellbent on striking at the heart of Islam in London, and a teenage boy caught in the crosshairs, risking his life to provide information to Lucas.

All around Ruth everything and everyone was frantic, words and information flying through the air thick and fast as bullets while the team tried to decide how to proceed. She knew what Lucas wanted, saw it in the lines of his face, heard it in the steady silence coming from his position beside her desk. They had a dead Pakistani intelligence operative and grainy CCTV footage of the linguist who'd killed him, had a suspicion that they knew who was directing the terror cell, even if they did not know for what purpose. Lucas wanted the boy to go back, despite the danger, wanted to use their asset for as long as he could, and something deep inside Ruth's heart shattered at the very thought.

"It's possible the handler gave Ashok up to Victor before he was killed," she told Lucas earnestly, desperately. "The boy's cover could be blown, you can't send him back. What if they challenge him? He's just a boy. We have to put in one of our own people."

Lucas shook his head. "There's no time, the attack's imminent."

Ruth had spent most of the morning with Tariq, pouring over images of Victor Chatterjee murdering the Pakistani operative with a terrible claw-like weapon, watching Victor limping, bloody but determined, through back alleys and side streets. If Victor knew the identity of their teenage operative, then sending him back to the terror cell would be to Ruth's mind no less than an act of murder. And yet, Lucas refused to change his mind. Every suggestion she made was met with stubborn opposition, and Ros sided with Lucas, leaving Ruth feeling rather vulnerable, and rather defeated as a result. Moments like this, working on the Grid didn't feel very much like being part of a team. Moments like this, it felt very much like being the sole dissenting member of a firing squad.

Ros and Lucas left her, their minds made up, determined to put the boy back into harm's way. Even Tariq, who offered her a sympathetic glance before returning to his work, had not joined his voice to hers, had offered no sympathy for a seventeen year old boy who might well be about to walk into the very jaws of death for no reason other than that he might be useful to their purposes. It was a vicious, callous thing to do, and Ruth couldn't help but wonder why everyone else seemed so sure, so certain their cause was the right one. There were a dozen different roads they could have taken, to her mind, but no one was _listening._

 _I don't know why I even bother,_ she thought morosely as she turned back to her computer, tried to still the trembling of her hands. What was the point of trying to teach lessons in humanity to people like Ros and Lucas? What was the point in objecting to the murkier areas of their work if in the end she continued on, just like the rest of them? What was the point in any of it?

"Ruth?" a soft voice and a familiar scent washed over her as Harry came to lean against the side of her desk, his face very close to hers, the little finger of his left hand brushing against her arm, offering her the barest of comforts.

"It's nothing," she said, mindful of the fact that she was at work, that she could not leap to her feet and shout out her grief and her fear, could not pummel his chest with her fists and demand that he fix this, could not weep and sink into his arms. The world of the Grid was very different from the world they had created together in the crumpled sheets of her bed, and she was trying, with all her might, to be a good spook, to carry on despite her misgivings and her anger and the unending tide of sorrow that threatened to drown her.

But there was Harry's face, soft and sad and just _there,_ close enough that she could reach out and brush her lips against his chin, if she wanted to, if only no one else was watching. He deserved an answer from her, deserved more than her half-hearted protestations, and so she offered him the truth, or at least a piece of it.

"I'd forgotten what it's like here," she confessed, trying to keep her voice soft, hoping it would not carry to Tariq, hoping that Harry could understand the world of hurt and confusion those quiet words encompassed. She had forgotten, while she was away, out there in the world, living as a normal person does, loving, quietly, just how ruthless this place could be, how heartless, just how much it grieved her. In that moment she felt utterly defenseless; she had never possessed Ros's cool nerves or Lucas's thick skin, but she had never felt quite so weak, so helpless, as she did now . Tom had been kind, in his own way, and Adam, too; Jo had been sweet and understanding, and Fiona had possessed all a mother's sympathy in addition to her steely resolve. Ros and Lucas, though, they were an altogether different sort, and they had no time to listen to Ruth's pleas for mercy.

"People as chess pieces," she continued, thinking of that poor boy, how her team had chosen to ignore the threat to his life in favor of the potential service he might provide for them, thinking how wrong it was, thinking how she hated that no one would listen to her. "The mess," she added, thinking of all the lives they'd ruined, all the people left shattered and alone once the Service had taken what it wanted from them. "That's all. It's nothing."

"It's not _nothing,_ Ruth," Harry cut across her, his voice gentle but firm. "And I'm glad you're here to remind us of that. To remind me." He reached out and squeezed her hand once, reassuringly, his movements hidden from sight by his own bulk, and then he was gone, turning away from her and resuming his place behind his desk. The warmth of his skin against her own, however, the reminder that while Ros and Lucas might not heed her warnings Harry would always be there to listen to her, to seek her counsel, eased her pain somewhat. It seemed to Ruth as if the ground were constantly shifting beneath her feet, but she knew she could always count on Harry, and in that moment she was desperately grateful to him for taking the time to seek her out.

* * *

Harry had rather hoped that they might avoid this conversation, that the few words they had spoken about George and Nico and Ruth's earnest reassurance that she was happy with the way things stood between them now would be enough, that he would never again have to raise the specter of her family. He knew better, though. Ruth had been so defensive of their young asset, so terribly worried for him, so deeply affected by Lucas's disregard for the lad's safety that Harry knew he had no other choice. She was more than just a member of his team, she was the woman who shared his bed, his heart, and so he knew that it would fall to him to seek her out, to console her, to help her through her grief. This was not one of his strong suits, but he had never loved anyone the way he loved his Ruth, and he was determined to do whatever he could to keep her happy, and well, and by his side, always.

With that in mind he called her into his office; Lucas and CO-19 were at the gym, preparing to capture the terrorist cell, Tariq and Ros were monitoring comms, and now seemed to him to be the opportune moment to speak to Ruth alone, to determine for himself that she was all right. He was fairly certain that the words she'd spoken to him there at her desk had been restrained, spoken carefully out of deference to their lack of privacy. With the blinds drawn his office was utterly cut off from the Grid, and there was nowhere more private than this room. Perhaps it might have been wiser to wait until they were away from Thames House, but in truth he did not know when next they would be able to leave, and he was not content to allow Ruth to wallow in grief and solitude for the rest of the day.

She slipped through the door, pale-faced but resolute, and after a brief glance at his face she closed the door behind her, leaning back against it and drawing in a deep breath as if in that single instant she had discerned his reasons for calling her here, and was preparing herself to do battle.

"Ruth," he began, speaking softly, as if she were a startled horse he needed to calm, but she cut him off at once.

"I'm fine, Harry," she told him. There was a sharpness in her tone he recognized, recalled all too well from those days following her blood-soaked return, when she had been short-tempered and waspish, lashing out at him at the slightest provocation, wounded and broken and desperately searching for someone to blame.

"Are you?" he fired back. For all that she was kind, was gentle, could be soft and affectionate and tender with him, sometimes Ruth was simply looking for a fight, and Harry was more than willing to give it to her. He would rather they fight now, would rather she shout at him, would rather she unload every ounce of her grief upon him in this instant than allow her to carry on suffering in silent misery. At least when she was fighting with him he could reassure himself that she had not given up, had not given in, that she was still here, with him.

"Harry-"

"This isn't the first time we've put an asset in danger since you've come back," he said slowly. "This is affecting you more than the others. Is it because of his age?"

"Of course it's because of his age!" she said, and though she kept her voice low so as not to carry out of his office the heat of it was enough to make him flinch. "He's a child, Harry."

"He's seventeen, Ruth. Hardly a child. He's old enough to know what he's doing, and he has chosen to help us."

She made an incredulous little sound at that. "Harry, you can't seriously believe-"

"He's not your son, Ruth." There, he'd said it, and let the chips fall where they may.

* * *

Harry's words took her like a slap to the face; she swayed back against the door, utterly shocked by how easily he had seen through to the very heart of her distress, how calculated he had been in playing on her emotions, forcing her to face her own conscience. Though she had been troubled all morning she had somehow managed to avoid that piece of her heart, the quiet, lonely part of her soul that missed Nico still, his laughter, his bright smiles, the way he would curl up in her lap at the end of a long day. There was nothing so precious as a child, and Ruth had failed to protect the one that had been entrusted to her, had left him orphaned and alone and broken. Was that why she was so determined to protect their young asset, why she was so cross when Lucas refused to back down? And how could it be that Harry could read her so easily when she had not even discovered this for herself? Her thoughts spun round and round, too fast and too many for her to comprehend.

"No, he isn't," she said at last. "But he's _someone's_ son, Harry. He's a teenager, he's not a spy. He had no idea when this began just how much danger he would be in. And besides, teenagers are reckless and impulsive; a trained operative would be hard pressed to survive in one of these cells, and he's in there, alone, with no idea what he's doing."

"Lucas will be there, to keep an eye on him. We won't let any harm come to him, Ruth, you'll see."

That was something else she had forgotten, while she was away. Harry was always so bloody sure about everything, always comfortable and secure in the knowledge that he knew best. Most of the time, of course, he was right, but Ruth had quite forgotten what it was like to stand in the face of such unshakable certainty.

"Does he remind you of Nico, Ruth?"

The sound of Nico's name falling from Harry's lips gave Ruth quite the strangest sensation, as if two very different worlds had just violently collided and she was left trembling in the aftermath of that titanic cataclysm. Nico was sunlight and Cyprus and a dark-haired man whispering words of love to her in Greek. Harry was shadows and London and a pair of tired brown eyes, an anchor holding her fast while the world spun and swirled around her like the sea in a storm. They did not belong in the same sentence, in the same world, and yet here she was, having to face them both at once. Her strength failed her, and she crossed the office to sit in the little chair opposite his desk, not trusting her legs to hold her up.

"Nico was - is - a sweet boy," she told him haltingly. "But yes, Ashok reminds me of him. They both have the arrogance of a child who has grown up safe and surrounded by love. They have never truly been in danger, and so they believe that nothing can hurt them." She took a deep, shuddering breath and lifted her eyes to gaze upon her lover's face, seeing the worry, the sorrow waiting for her there. "But they're wrong. And I think they have both learned that lesson, now."

Harry leaned towards her, but the desk was too wide, and he could not reach her. Ruth did not know quite how she felt about that; some days it felt as if the warm breadth of his hands was the only thing holding her together, but in this moment she was not certain that she would be able to carry on if he touched her. She felt fragile, and afraid, and she could not say exactly why, but she did not want to go to pieces now, not on the Grid, not even hidden from sight as she was now. Later she could weep, curled up with her head on Harry's chest, safe beneath his arms, but who they were at home was not, could not ever be, who they were at work.

And yet the lines were blurring all the time; they were in the middle of an active operation, and Harry was asking her about Nico, trying in his own way to help her through. For all that his attempts were somewhat clumsy, for all that his timing was terrible, she loved him still, loved him because he loved her, because he was strong when she was weak, because he was still here, and not running from her and her grief.

"Ruth-" Harry started to say, but at that moment Tariq burst through the door, and with a single glance they both acknowledged that their conversation would have to wait. There was work still to be done.


	14. Chapter 14

With photographs in hand Ruth slipped into Harry's office, not bothering to knock. He was, as ever, seated behind his desk and methodically making his way through a pile of paperwork; _that's what it means to be the boss,_ Ruth thought as she offered him a weary smile. No more the thrill of field work for Harry; his lot in life now consisted of endless reams of paper and endless phone calls and _strategy meetings._ Still, though, he loved it, Ruth knew. He loved being in charge, loved helping his people, loved being able to see all the pieces upon the board, and plan his moves accordingly. He'd never been particularly good at following orders, but he was bloody spectacular at giving them.

"Ruth," he said her name softly, his voice strained from fatigue. There was so much that needed doing, organizing CO-19, scouting possible locations for the second impending terrorist attack, monitoring their young asset who was still embedded with the Hindu nationalists, and all of them were running low, having missed sleep, eating only greasy takeaways. Still, though, they'd certainly had worse, certainly stood guard at their posts for far longer than this in the past, and though he was clearly tired, she knew that Harry was not yet ready to pack it in. He would see this thing through to its conclusion; he always did.

"I've found something," she answered, crossing the room at once to stand beside him, arranging the photos on his desk. The blinds on his windows were drawn, blocking them from view, and so Ruth indulged herself for a moment, resting her hand on his shoulder as she leaned down to explain to him what she'd found. It would seem that Nightingale was once again the root cause of their current disaster. Nightingale had identified a Hindu man with a radical bent, staged a vicious attack upon his beloved little sister, and then delivered him to a handler who had provided him all the means and rhetoric to plot his very own terrorist attack. Two violent events were rapidly approaching, events designed to foment hatred and unrest between Hindus and Muslims in England - and perhaps the world at large - and Nightingale, that shadowy beast they could not yet define with six billion pounds stashed away in Pakistan, was behind it all. Ruth told Harry this, showed him the proof, and then waited, her hand still resting on his shoulder, to see what he might say.

" _Christ,"_ was his response.

Without thought Ruth slid her hand across his shoulder to the back of his neck and up into his hairline, gentle fingers massaging his scalp as he closed his eyes and sighed beneath her touch. He liked it when she touched him like this, she knew, and she liked being able to soothe him, to help him, even when it seemed as if the world was falling apart around them. It was such a little thing, and Ruth was happy to do it, if only so she could hear the soft sounds of contentment that murmured from the back of his throat each time she did.

For a time they were silent, Ruth staring down at the photographs, Harry's eyes closed as her fingers continued to drift through his sparse hair. The last twenty-four hours had been so chaotic she could hardly tell which way was up, but the longer she stood there, with Harry silent and serene beneath her hands, the more the fervor of the operation faded. Her thoughts turned away from terror and distress as she focused instead on the last conversation they'd had alone in this place. Harry had asked after Nico, had tried in his own way to help her recognize the cause of her doubt where their operation was concerned and put those doubts to rest. He had been about to ask her something else, she realized; he had said her name, softly, questioningly, and then Tariq had burst in, and whatever else Harry wanted to say to her had been lost. They had a few moments now, a few moments to breathe while outside that room their team was hard at work trying to put an end to calamity, and so Ruth asked herself if now was the moment to press him, to finish the conversation they had started.

"Harry," she began uneasily, her fingers still pressing gently against him, tracing nonsense patterns over his scalp, through his hair, to the nape of his neck and back up again.

He hummed in response, reaching out blindly to catch her by the wrist. He drew her hand to his lips and kissed her once, softly, before folding her hand in his own, bringing it to rest against his heart. He tilted his head back, his honey dark eyes warm and soft and full of wordless devotion as he gazed at her. Ruth lost herself in those eyes, in the softness of him, the sweetness that he hid away from the rest of the world and lavished only upon her. There was so much love in him, a depth of loyalty and passion and desire and tender concern, and yet she had never seen him express this piece of himself to anyone save her. _He must have loved his wife, once,_ Ruth reminded herself as she stood still as a statue, rooted to the spot by the power of his eyes. Had he ever looked at her this way, Ruth wondered, the mysterious Jane, the woman he had once loved so deeply that he gave her his name? Not for the first time in their acquaintance Ruth found herself dreadfully curious about Jane Townsend, and perhaps now that she and Harry had fallen into bed together, declared their love for one another and spent every night wrapped up tight together, she was in a position to ask such questions of him. _Only not right this moment,_ she told herself. No, right now she didn't feel much like sharing Harry with anyone, not even the memory of his ex-wife.

"Do you want to have children, Ruth?" Harry asked her in a gentle voice.

Ruth couldn't help it; she recoiled from him, her hand slipping out of his grasp and her body pivoting away from him at once. Her heart was pounding in her chest, blood rushing in her ears so loudly she could hardly hear herself think. Had he really just asked her that? Here? Now?

It wasn't that Harry had an appalling sense of timing; he didn't, really. He knew better than anyone how to draw the truth out of an unwilling suspect, and he knew the value of catching his opponent off guard, lobbing a loaded question into a quiet moment and watching the other player spectacularly explode. _Don't give them time to think, don't give them a chance to escape, don't let them get too comfortable;_ those were the rules of interrogation, and Harry used them as expertly in his personal life as in the professional sphere. Ruth couldn't help but resent that, at the moment; she was well and truly rattled, and she suspected he'd done it on purpose.

"Now is hardly the time, Harry," she began, somewhat feebly, but he cut her off at once. Ruth had turned her back on him but she could hear the chair creak beneath him as he leaned towards her.

"You cared for the boy. Nico. And you're worried about this lad Ashok as well. You have a gentle heart, Ruth. It's one of many things I love about you. And I just thought that since we are...what we are, to one another, I ought to ask. I thought we ought to talk about it."

Ruth took a deep, shuddering breath, trying very hard not to cry. The answer to the question was simple, but the reasoning behind it was irritatingly complex and she balked at the thought of unburdening herself so completely to someone. _But this isn't just anyone,_ she reminded herself as she turned to face him, her hands trembling, her pulse racing. _This is Harry._ Harry who was watching her with sympathy etched in every line of his face, Harry who loved her, wholly and completely, Harry whom she loved without reservation. This was the man she had chosen to share her bed and her life, though they had given no name to what they were to one another, though they had made no promises of fidelity or devotion. Such words had seemed unnecessary, and perhaps they still were, but Ruth knew that sooner or later this was a topic that would need to be addressed. It was a question every couple must face, and death and horror and disgustingly irregular working hours did not provide a sufficient excuse for her to escape it now.

"No," she told him honestly, her voice hardly more than a whisper. He did not balk at her answer, did not protest, did not try to talk her out of it; Harry simply watched her, his lips pressed into a line as he gave her a little nod. That quiet understanding bolstered her flagging confidence, and she hastened to explain herself.

"I did care for Nico, Harry. And maybe once, years ago, I might have wanted to have a child of my own. But now, after all the things we've seen…" her voice trailed off, the vision of George falling to his knees playing on a loop in her mind like some ghastly film. No, Ruth had made her choice the day Harry had offered her the chance to leave MI-5, the day she had lain beside him and promised that she would stand and fight. "It broke my heart, Harry, the day that Mani took us, the way that George...died, having to send Nico home with his aunt. As long as we're in this job, the people we love will be in danger. I couldn't do that to a child. And even if I left," which, in truth, she had no intention of doing, "the only person I would consider having a child with is you. What would we do, Harry? I would never ask you to leave the service, but I couldn't bear to be home, or working somewhere else, and knowing you were here without me. And as long as you're here, our family would be in danger. I can't face that again, Harry. I couldn't bear it."

At first, when Ruth explained any child of hers would have him for a father the tips of Harry's ears had gone pink, as if he were pleased - or embarrassed - by such an open display of devotion from her. As she continued on, however, any positive emotion he might have been feeling as regarded the possibility of their having children faded utterly, and when she finished speaking he simply looked drawn and tired.

"It's not too late for you to leave, Ruth," he said slowly, though his expression was pained, as if he could hardly bear to give voice to such a thought. "You could find a nice man, settle down, live your life far away from this place."

"I don't want a nice man," she answered him, smiling just a little. "I want you. I've made my choice. I lost you once, and I won't do it again."

She had no idea how it happened; one moment she was standing on the other side of his desk, watching him trying to process all that she'd told him, and the next she found herself wrapped up in his arms, her nose pressed against the base of his throat.

"I don't deserve you, Ruth," Harry breathed, his voice low and sad and yet full of wonder. Ruth fisted her hands in his jacket, held him tighter against her. It was never a question of deserving; Ruth knew that now. She had worried, when this thing between them first began, that she didn't deserve to be so happy after George's death, after everything she and Harry had done together. Time had passed, however, and she had been given a chance to think, to mull over every step along the road that had led she and Harry to this moment. Perhaps if life were a ledger book the dark things they had done would have outweighed the good, the blood on their hands would have damned them both to lives cold and lonely. The truth was, however, that they were two halves of the same coin, kindred spirits bound together by loss and duty, and now that they had found one another Ruth could not bear to be parted from him. She would only have one chance, she knew, to live her life, and this was the path she had chosen. Ruth had chosen Harry, for good or ill, had chosen the service and all the sacrifice that came with it. They were made for this. They were made for one another.

"I love you," he told her fervently, and in reply she tilted her head back, and accepted the warm benediction of his kiss.


	15. Chapter 15

"Harry, you can't stay here all night," Ruth murmured softly as she came to stand behind him, her hands resting gently on his shoulders as she pressed a tender kiss to the top of his head.

In response Harry only sighed, reaching up with his left hand to cover her own where it rested against him. She was right, of course; there was no point in his sitting here, in his little study on the first floor of his house, staring at his secure laptop for the rest of the night. It would be a terrible waste of time and resources, not to mention a recipe for disaster should he forgo sleep and yet still trek into the office in the morning, hellbent on saving the country - and indeed the world, from Nightingale's next plot. It would be unkind to Ruth, to leave her cold and lonely in his bed with nothing but the t-shirt he'd loaned her for comfort. And yet, still, he lingered.

"Something dark is coming, Ruth," he told her. It was easier, somehow, to speak such a thought aloud when the sun had fled and he was sitting in his own home, far away from the lights of the Grid, with his feet bare upon the floorboards and Ruth's hands pressing gently against him. It was easier to confess his doubts and his worries and his own mortal failings in this place where he was Harry, just Harry, just Ruth's lover, not the formidable head of Section D.

Her fingers curled against him, the pressure firm through the fabric of his dressing gown. Every touch of her hand was a welcome benediction, a blessing he thought he'd never experience again. Of the pair of them, Ruth had always been the more tactile; a hand trailing against his arm, the brush of her shoulder against him when they walked, and now that they were together the warmth of her skin against his own was nearly constant. Oh, when he had her at home, or naked in her bed Harry drunk his fill of her, but Ruth's gestures were more about comfort than passion. She always seemed to know, by some instinct he could not define, just when he needed her most, and she reached for him then, calmed him, soothed him, revived him. That his Ruth, ordinarily so hesitant, so reticent, so skittish, could so wholly give of herself for the sake of his battered heart left him full of hope, of joy, of love for this woman. Every time she touched him he fell further under her spell, became more convinced that he could not survive another day without her by his side.

"Come and have a cup of tea," she told him, her voice low and soft and warm as an embrace. He was powerless to resist that voice, and so he rose from his chair, her hands dropping away from his shoulders as he moved though he reached out at once to tangle their fingers together. She presented quite the alluring picture, this love of his, wearing nothing but his faded black t-shirt, many sizes too big for her. Her dark hair curled softly around her angel's face, her thighs pale and inviting beneath the hem of his t-shirt, those blue eyes shining at him brightly from her tired face. Ruth needed to sleep as much as did he but she was here, with him, putting her own needs aside for his sake, and he could not take another step without drawing her into his arms. He kissed her, standing there in his study, one hand tangled with hers while the other cradled her cheek, held her close against him. The taste of her, the warmth of her, the infinite softness of her body pressed against him never ceased to amaze him, never ceased to inflame him, left him grateful and hungry in almost equal measure.

"Harry," she breathed his name against his lips, a gentle admonition, and he smiled, releasing his hold on her at once.

"How about that tea, then?" he said.

Ruth smiled and led the way out of his study, her steps silent and graceful as a deer. It was dreadfully late, but Harry's mind was spinning, and Ruth seemed to recognize that, seemed to know that what he needed now, more than anything else, was a cup of sweet tea and a willing ear. Could it be, he asked himself as she pushed him towards a chair at the table and spun away to start the kettle, that only few months before he had been cold and lonely in this house, thinking he would never see her again? Could it be that only a few months before he would have faced such indecision, such doubt, such a terrible lingering threat entirely alone, unaided, without her gentle guidance to sustain him? The long days of her exile had seemed to last an eternity, and endless of sea of loss and grief, and though he had previously believed he would never recover from that bereavement now that he had her in his home he found he could hardly recall it. Such was love, he supposed, the only thing he'd ever found that had the power to heal his hurts, and numb the pain of his losses. The only thing that made the rest of it worthwhile.

"Talk to me, Harry," Ruth said, her back turned toward him, shifting from one foot to the other as she waited for the kettle to boil.

Harry sighed. Yes, he loved her; yes, he was enchanted by her; _yes,_ he wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around her and bury himself between her thighs and forget all his troubles, but Ruth was more than just his lover. She was his Senior Intelligence Analyst, the only other person on the Grid he could turn to in moments such as this, and he knew that he had to trust in her professionally as well as personally. He had learned long before that if he ignored her professional counsel he did so at his own peril. Still, though, he did not relish bringing work into a moment such as this, when he would much preferred to be kissing her instead.

"It's NIghtingale," he said at last. "Samuel Walker, that business with the murdered agents, Baisley and the bank, Sarah Caulfield's betrayal, Nicholas Blake, now these orchestrated attacks between Hindus and Muslims; they are only growing bolder, and I'm worried about where this is going."

"Nicholas Blake?" Ruth asked, turning to him with a mug in each hand, a little furrow forming above her brow. Harry smiled at her softly as she approached, waiting for her to take her seat beside him before he explained himself.

"Someone set him up. He wasn't involved with organized crime, Ruth. I've known the man for a decade; he was the HS for four years. I _knew_ him. He wouldn't have done this."

"Didn't he arrange to have you killed once?" she asked shrewdly, watching him like a hawk over the rim of her mug.

Harry let loose a mirthless sort of chuckle. During the many long nights they had spent tangled up in bed together Harry had slowly - reluctantly - told Ruth of everything that had transpired in her absence, leaving nothing out. The deaths of their friends, Connie's betrayal, Yalta, and yes, even Davie King. Harry knew that most people, having learned that the British Home Secretary had readily agreed to step aside and allow an assassin to hunt them, would likely curse the man and go in search of a new profession. Not so for Harry Pearce; he and Blake had soldiered on together, had formed a courteous, mutually beneficial working relationship. It was difficult to explain such a change of circumstance to someone who was not as intimately acquainted with death and dark deeds as Harry, but he rather felt that Ruth might be able to understand him.

"It's not as if it was his idea," Harry said lightly. "At the time he believed he was making a necessary sacrifice for the sake of the realm. I showed him the error of his ways, he apologized, and we moved on."

"You're very loyal to your friends," she said softly, reaching out to rest her hand against his forearm for a moment. "That still doesn't explain why-"

"Why I think Nightingale was involved in his removal?" Harry finished the thought for her. "We must look at the bigger picture, Ruth. With Blake out of the way, there's a new Home Secretary, one who's young and rather inexperienced. I've met with Andrew Lawrence and he seems nice enough, but he's rather...deferential. Pliable. And now there's this mess with the Hindu terror cell; we managed to stop the attacks here in London, but they were less successful in the US. There were four orchestrated attacks yesterday. This was an international attempt to stir up unrest between Muslims and Hindus, and now a Nightingale operative is in charge of the Pakistani Army. Interesting, isn't it, that they've moved one of their players into a position of power at the same moment we find ourselves with a new Home Secretary?"

"You think Lawrence is a member of Nightingale?" Ruth's eyes were watching him, focused and alert, and beneath her steady gaze he found his resolve strengthening. Yes, something terrible was coming, but they would face it, just as they had faced every obstacle that had so far been thrown in their paths. They would present a united front, and they would defend the realm.

"Either that, or they deliberately removed Blake so that he could be replaced by a much weaker opponent. Either way, I feel as if they're getting ready for something. Something big."

"The conference?" Ruth suggested.

Once again, she'd read his mind. There was a summit fast approaching, between India and Pakistan, and with a Nightingale operative at the height of Pakistani power and manufactured tensions between Hindus and Muslims reaching a fever pitch, it seemed to Harry as if it had all been leading to this, as if every move Nightingale had made so far had been focused on this moment. Both countries had nuclear capabilities, and as relations between them became more fraught, an all-out nuclear war was beginning to seem more and more likely.

"I think this is what they have been aiming for all along, Ruth. _A new world order,_ remember? Nightingale wants to redraw the international map of power, and I think this is where they will start. Allies for both countries will be forced to step in, and we may well find ourselves in the midst of a third world war."

Ruth stared at him for a moment, processing all that he had said, and then she sighed. "I can see why you can't sleep."

Despite her tendency towards stammering, bumbling verbosity Ruth could, on occasion, be the very soul of dry understatement, and Harry smiled at her, thinking once again how lucky he was to have found her, this woman who understood him so completely.

But then she did something he did not expect, something that reminded him that his Ruth was never to be underestimated. She could be unpredictable, bold when the moment called for it, and as he watched her she set aside her mug and rose from her chair.

"Well," she said slowly, standing there beside him, "you can't fix it now, Harry. The summit is going forward, and whatever happens next, we'll do with it when it comes. There's no sense in worrying any more. Not tonight, at least."

There was something in her expression, something anxious but exhilarated, that set Harry's heart to racing.

"And what do you propose We do instead, Ruth?" he asked her, pushing his chair back from the table and reaching out to curve one hand over her hip, though he made no move to stand.

Ruth caught her bottom lip between her teeth, and then reached down, catching the hem of her borrowed t-shirt in her hand before lifting it up and tossing it aside. Beneath it she was gloriously, utterly naked, pale nipples pebbling in the cool air of the kitchen, the dark curls at the apex of her thighs calling out his name. Before Harry could speak a word she moved, carefully lowering herself so that she was sitting on his lap, her thighs hugging his hips, her arms snaking around his neck.

"Forget," she whispered, leaning in to trace the line of his jaw. "Forget the rest of the world, Harry. Just for now. Just for tonight." Her lips were soft and warm against his skin, and in that moment he did exactly what he was bid, forget everything else in the world save for this beautiful woman he loved more than his own life. He tangled his hands in her dark hair and drew her to him for a fierce, heated kiss, and together they shed their sins and their struggles until there was nothing left but the warmth of skin on skin and the love that kept them marching on together through the madness.


	16. Chapter 16

"I feel like I haven't been home in years," Ruth whispered into the quiet, her lips brushing against the bare skin of Harry's shoulder as she made her confession. They were tangled up together, naked and exhausted, the sheets a crumpled heap at their feet, Ruth sprawled across his chest, a little sweaty, a little sore, and a lot in love with him. If Harry thought it strange that Ruth should admit to feeling homesick while lying in her own bed with her lover's arms around her he did not mention it; instead he tightened his hold on her, and thought for a long moment before answering her. That was the thing about Harry; for all his bombastic rhetoric, his tendency toward melodrama and his thirst for revenge, he really was a terribly thoughtful man, and he understood her better than anyone else could ever hope to do.

"I know what you mean," he answered finally. His voice was soft and sad, the palms of his hands smoothing up and down the slope of her back, warming her, calming her, keeping her grounded in this moment with him. "I look around, and I don't know where I am any more."

"Everything is the same, but none of it feels familiar," she said.

Harry hummed his agreement, lifting his head just far enough off the pillows to press his lips to the curve of her neck for a moment. If Ruth had been the praying sort, she might well have closed her eyes in that moment and given thanks for Harry, for this man who understood her, even when she was strange, even when she was maudlin. The words they shared were the truth, a hard, bitter truth that she had been wrangling with for weeks now.

" _The past is a foreign country,"_ Harry told her as he settled back down.

And of course it was; Ruth had been plucked from paradise and thrown back into a world she thought she'd left far behind her, and though she should have felt at home in these familiar surrounds, instead she still felt like a traveler. London was still standing, Thames House as foreboding and comfortable as ever, the constant never-ending threat of some international calamity hung over their heads, and Harry spent his days enthroned in his fishbowl office. Those things remained the same, and yet everywhere Ruth turned she was confronted with a strange, terrifying feeling of absence, heartsick for the old days. She was weary, and just a little bit lost.

"They say home isn't a place," she said, shifting around until she was sitting upright, until she could press her palms against the hard lines of Harry's chest and feel his heart beat beneath her fingertips, feel his hands curl protectively around her thighs. "It's people. How do we know where we belong, when the people we care for are gone?"

As Ruth watched him, watching her, she could clearly see concern etched in every line of his face. No matter how many times they talked about it, no matter how many times she quietly assured him that she was putting the events surrounding George's death behind her, that she was glad to have him here with her, she knew that Harry worried about her. There was nothing she could say that would convince him that her heart was on the mend; he would only trust what he could see, and she knew the picture she presented, small and vulnerable, talking about how much she missed a feeling she could not define, missed all the people she'd loved, all the people she'd lost. Did he think she was talking about George, Ruth wondered as she looked down at him, this man who only moments before had filled her, consumed her, overcome her, or did he understand that she was talking about all the friends they had lost, that she was talking about herself?

"I think sometimes we find a new home," he told her sagely. "We outgrow our childhood homes, and we carve out new places for ourselves. And sometimes we leave them behind."

"Or they leave us behind," Ruth mused. She felt left behind, abandoned, out of sync with everyone and everything around her, except for Harry. Ros and Lucas were islands unto themselves, Tariq and the rest of the team too young, too desperate for guidance to be counted as friends. It fell to Ruth to offer that guidance, a listening ear, a bit of counsel for those struggling souls, but there was no one left to shore up Ruth's own reserves, to put an end to all her self-doubts, save for Harry himself.

"I'm still here, Ruth," Harry told her gently, his hands sliding along the length of her thighs to curl around her hips, anchoring her to him, reminding her that she wasn't as alone as she sometimes she felt she was. Each time she stumbled, reached out blindly for some support, Harry was there to catch her, to steady her, to help her on her way. No, as long as he was here with her, she was not alone. Perhaps it was unfair to depend on him so completely, but she knew that he relied on her in much the same way. They had earned this, this peace, this companionship, this sliver of hope in the darkness.

 _I love you,_ Ruth thought, still perched atop his hips, looking down on him, this titan of a man resting in the shelter of her thighs. If she spoke those words now, it would not be the first time she had ever said them to a man in the warmth of her bed late at night, but it would be the first time she truly understood what they meant, truly felt them down to her bones. Before Harry, Ruth had not know what love truly was. The need, the want, the peace, the struggle of it, had never been revealed to her before she opened her heart to this man. Love had torn her into pieces, and knit her back together again, and it was only now that she understood that love was inherently possessed of the potential to do both of those things at once. Now she knew that nothing was as weak as a heart in love, nor was there anything in the world more resilient.

"Sleep, Ruth," Harry whispered, his hands coasting along the length of her back, pulling her down to lie against him, turning them both so that they lay on their sides, hopelessly entangled. He pressed a tender kiss to her brow, and she burrowed into his embrace, knowing that for now, just for tonight, she was safe.

* * *

The next morning, however, brought with it a terrible danger. An Indian submarine held hostage in Pakistani waters, rising tensions between two states both in possession of nuclear devices and leaders on short fuses, and a warren of leads to follow. They'd found the financier responsible for setting up the Nightingale meeting in Basel, and - alarmingly - discovered that the charming new Home Secretary had spent a weekend at the man's villa. Harry did not need more cause to distrust the new HS, his pride still smarting over Nightingale's ousting of Nicholas Blake, whom Harry counted as a friend despite the man's attempt to have him killed some years before. Ruth had no particular feelings as regarded Nicholas Blake; yes, the man had been responsible for giving her back her life, but he had been in office when she was forced to fake her death in the first place and had not lifted a finger to help her, and had only reinstated her at Harry's insistence. Ruth was rather certain that Harry had tactfully reminded Blake about the Davey King fiasco in order to secure Ruth's return to the land of the living and her rather substantial pay rise, and knowing that did not endear the former HS to her any further. She had not yet met Andrew Lawrence, and so had not formed an opinion of him, either. Each time they discovered something new about Nightingale a thousand more questions burst into existence, and Ruth was not about to allow herself to become too tied to one theory or another.

Harry, though, had apparently already set his mind on Lawrence being a Nightingale operative. It was too neat, his having spent the weekend with a Nightingale conspirator so soon after taking office, immediately after Blake was removed through suspicious means. Though Ruth agreed it was too convenient to be coincidence, there were too many moving pieces for her to settle on any one theory. The leaders of Pakistan and India - as well as the American Secretary of State and a few high ranking Chinese diplomats - were converging on London for peace talks, Sarah Caulfield was skulking about, and Andrew Lawrence was bumbling around, his motives as yet unclear. Harry wanted good and bad, right and wrong, black and white, Lucas was lamenting for the loss of his lover, Ros was rolling her eyes, and Ruth knew it would fall to her to have a somewhat uncomfortable conversation with Harry.

With that in mind she quietly slipped into his office, and found him sitting behind his desk, watching her with a speculative look on his face. Perhaps it should have been strange, how easily they navigated this back and forth, set aside the quiet, pensive people they were at night in her bed and assumed the mantle of battle hardened spooks in this place, but they did it each day, and each day it became just that little bit easier to manage. In the old days - before - Ruth had always believed they would never survive such merging of the two halves of their lives, had always believed that one must take precedence over the other. Now, she was beginning to think that this was the only way they could survive. They had given every piece of themselves to one another, at home and at work, and they were stronger for it.

"I wanted to talk to you about the Home Secretary," she began carefully. Harry lifted his chin, watching her, waiting to see what she might say. "I think we should exercise caution."

He pressed his lips together and gave a little nod. "So do I."

Ruth fought the urge to smile at him, perhaps to reach out and run her fingers through his hair in the way she knew he liked. _Dear Harry,_ she thought. She could read him like a book; he'd already made up his mind, and he appeared grateful to have her on side. Ruth had not come to give credence to his suppositions, however.

"I suspect I mean it rather differently," she told him wryly.

That got his attention. He sat up a little straighter, his brow furrowed, and though she knew he was trying to hide it, she could clearly see that he was caught off guard by the notion that she might disagree with him.

"Go on," he said slowly.

Ruth took a deep breath. Though she had rather a lot of practice at it, it was still difficult, sometimes, to challenge him in this place, where he wore his authority like a robe of state. Still, though, someone had to, and Ruth knew that, all things considered, she was the only one in a position to do so, the only one whose dissent Harry would hear with thoughtful consideration.

"Andrew Lawrence having friendly relations with a Basel conspirator is not proof, Harry," she began.

He cut her off, the way he often did, but Ruth did not mind the interruption so very much. It was simply the way they did things; they interjected and cut across one another, finished one another's thoughts and picked up where they'd left off until together they found their way through the mess. He may interrupt her, but she would do the same to him, and they would hear one another out.

"Odd timing, though. Two day break together in Tuscany just as Nightingale force out his predecessor."

 _Damn him,_ Ruth thought wryly. Before Harry, arrogance had never been a trait she found appealing in a man, but the degree of self-assuredness with which he carried himself never failed to draw her to him, to make her want him just as much now as she ever did when she was young and foolish.

"That's called the availability error in psychology. Most common cause of irrational thought," she countered him quickly, and in the quirk of his eyebrow she saw that however much she might be attracted to him, he was equally as enamored with her. Their relationship had been built on sparring matches such as this one, and it felt good to be in this room, arguing with him again.

"Nobody else has raised a doubt." It was a thin defense, and the fact that it was the only one Harry had told Ruth that not only had she given him much to think about as regarded Andrew Lawrence, he was also, in his own way, rather proud of her for standing up to him. It had been a long time since she had sought his approval in the professional sphere, having known for years now that he trusted her completely, but nonetheless it was still nice to know that he valued what they shared.

"They may be reluctant to challenge their leader's obvious conviction, which is exactly how miscarriages of justice take place."

She had him there, she knew, watching the lift of his eyebrow somehow both incredulous and approving.

"No such reluctance with you, eh, Ruth?" he asked, smiling at her wryly. Perhaps Harry was not willing to believe that Lawrence was totally innocent, but he had heard her words, and he would heed her advice to err on the side of prudence. What more could she ask for, really, than to have a man who loved her, who respected her, who listened to her and held her and made her feel safe? He was not perfect, her Harry, but no man was. He was the best of men, and she loved him.

"I'm not saying he isn't bad," she said. "I'm just saying we should remain open to the possibility that he isn't." Having made her final point she readied herself to leave, adding, "I'll check how we're doing at the hotel."

Harry stopped her before she had taken more than a step, however. "Do you really think I'm such an autocrat that I would not heed the warnings of my staff?" he asked her. His tone was light, his expression sufficient to let her know that he was only teasing her, and despite herself Ruth smiled.

"Of course not, Harry," she answered. "I know you aren't like that. But they-" she gestured towards the bustle of the Grid beyond his office windows- "don't know that. Someone has to say something."

"I'm glad you were the one to do it." His voice was soft and kind, and Ruth's heart melted at the sound of it. If the blinds had been drawn, if they hadn't been in full view of all and sundry, she might have gone to him, might have settled on his lap and pressed her lips against his neck and let him hold her, let them draw what comfort they could from one another. That would have to be saved for later, however, and so she only smiled at him.

"So am I, Harry," she told him. And then she turned and left him, her steps lighter than they had been when she entered his office.


	17. Chapter 17

**A/N: the timeline of this episode is indecipherable, so I have taken some liberties in that department. The end of this chapter is M rated, because they deserve it.**

* * *

The target sat alone on a bench in the park on a fine day, reading his newspaper, a well dressed man who looked completely at home here despite his Chinese heritage. Ruth approached him with her head down, the chatter of her team in her ear, trying not to walk too quickly or too slowly, trying not to draw attention to herself, trying not to ruin this chance to gain information on the looming disaster in Pakistan.

" _Steady, Echo One,"_ a gentle voice murmured in her ear, and Ruth tried to take comfort from the knowledge that Harry was there, watching over her, and not bristle at the thought of him speaking to her that way when everyone could hear.

The man Ruth had arranged to meet was employed by the Chinese embassy, a pragmatic man with a history of giving information to Five when it suited him, when he feared that the hardliners in his nation's government were taking them down an undesirable path. Pakistan currently held an Indian nuclear submarine hostage, China was likely to back India, and any further posturing or threats could very easily tip the entire region over into a full scale nuclear war. That had to be avoided at all costs, and so Ruth took her seat on the bench beside this stranger, holding her breath and scanning the crowds of people all around them, wondering who was enjoying their day and who was watching Ruth and her asset like a hawk poised to strike.

"There is going to be war," the man told her. His tone was so soft, so sure, that is sent a chill straight down Ruth's spine. War in that region would be catastrophic, might well set off another global calamity such as the world had not seen in sixty years, such as Ruth prayed they would never see again. Though the very thought terrified her, she could not deny that _this_ was why she still worked for Five, why she did not beg Harry to retire, did not harbor any dreams of the pair of them running away to the countryside together. Their world was dark and frightening, but they were all that stood between the lives of ordinary citizens and complete and utter ruin. This was what they did, the mantle she and Harry had chosen to take up, the work that they had trained and suffered and bled for, and there was no one else she wanted watching over her little island nation more than she and Harry. The way forward was frightening, but the prospect of what might happen should either of them step down from the wall was far more terrifying.

"The talks-" she began, but the asset cut her off at once.

"Will solve nothing. Pakistan's President is weak and does not make the decisions now." This much Ruth already knew; she and Harry had discussed it already, the way the leader of the Army in Pakistan had seized the reins of the government while the more sympathetic President was pushed to the side. They had to find some way to return power to the hands of the government, to prevent an all-out coup.

As the asset talked about the way the world might change, should India and Pakistan go to war, Lucas whispered in her ear, urged her to press him on Nightingale, to find out if the end result of the impending conflict had already been decided, if the whole thing had been orchestrated by the conspirators as they feared. Ruth did her best to that end, though she dearly wished it were Harry, and not Lucas, who coached her through. Still, though, Harry was listening, standing guard in silence, and that had to be enough.

"What I really wanted to warn you about is closer to home," the asset said urgently. "We know there will be an incident-"

It happened so quickly; one moment they were sitting very still, Ruth listening to every word the Chinese operative said with bated breath, and the next a man appeared as if from nowhere and shot the asset square in the chest.

Instinct took over; Ruth gasped once, sharply, flying to her feet and out of range, reflexively covering her face while the coms erupted into a whirr of noise. A member of her team who had been standing close by took the assassin down at once, and Lucas and Tariq came charging into view.

Ruth's hands were shaking, her heart pounding in her chest, and the only thought that echoed in her mind was _how, how, how?_ How could this have happened? She turned to look at the asset and found him slumped on the bench; a moment before he had been alive and well, breathing and blinking and speaking to her softly, urgently. A moment before he had been a man, his heart pumping blood through his veins, lips moving as he spoke; no doubt he'd had plans for supper, had friends of his own, maybe even a family. Maybe there was a woman out there, waiting for him to come home, a woman whose life was about to be ruined. A minute before he had been a man, and now he was no more than a corpse. Ruth shuddered despite the warmth of the sun overhead.

" _Lucas,"_ dimly she heard the sound of Harry's voice over the coms, " _bring Ruth back here. Now."_

* * *

The moment she stepped into his office Harry wrapped her in his arms. The door had barely closed behind her but he had to feel her, had to hold her, had to know that she was well and whole despite her brush with death. For her part Ruth went with him willingly, going a bit limp as he clutched her to him fiercely. The moment the shots had rung out his heart had stopped beating, and then when he learned that Ruth was alive it had kicked into double time, pounding so fiercely that for a moment he was worried that he might be on the verge of some sort of episode. This was the closest he had come to losing her since that day in the warehouse with Mani, and all the steps they had taken towards each other over the intervening months had served only to endear her more to him, to make her the one person in all the world he could not survive without. He had demanded her return and then closeted himself in his office, closed the blinds and sat down behind his desk staring into space, his thoughts tumbling through his mind in patterns he could not comprehend, his eyes unseeing, his entire soul crying out for her. Harry loved this woman who stood nestled in his embrace, loved her with everything he had, and he could not bear the thought that he had sent her into danger.

And yet that was precisely what he had done. Yes, the Chinese asset was familiar with Ruth, but anyone could have gone in her place. He could easily have sent Lucas or Ros, but it was _Ruth_ he'd told to meet with the man. Harry had sent her because he trusted her, because her skills in the field had improved dramatically over the course of her exile and he knew she would excel a this task, because she was a petite woman who would neither draw attention to herself nor intimidate the asset. On paper, Ruth had been the logical choice, but it was not Harry's rational mind that spoke to him now. He could only hear the sound of his own heart, lambasting him for putting her in harm's way.

"I'm all right, Harry," she told him, her voice muffled as she'd buried her face in the crook of his neck. Though his every instinct told him not to let her go Harry took a step back, reached out and cradled her cheeks in his palms, turned her face towards him gently so that he could gaze into those diamond-bright eyes he loved so well, so that he could feel the rushing of her blood beneath her skin and know for certain that she was not a figment of his imagination. But standing there, holding her so close, so relieved to find her well after the calamity of the afternoon, what little remained of his self control deserted him, and he captured her lips with his own, wanting and hungry.

Ruth whimpered, just a little, no doubt taken aback by his unexpected advance, but she did not push him away; she wrapped one hand around the back of his neck and caught his lapel with the other, pulling him impossibly close as her lips parted beneath his and their tongues brushed together, fervently, passionately. When this thing between them had begun they had agreed to keep it off the Grid as much as possible, and snogging like teenagers in his office was definitely _not_ keeping it off the Grid, but Harry couldn't stop himself, and Ruth didn't seem to mind. He pressed against her until she took a step back, and then another, until her back was flush against the door. Still they kissed, wet and sweet and full of desperation, unable and unwilling to stop. _I love you, I love you, I'm sorry, I love you,_ Harry's heart cried out so loudly he was certain she must have heard it.

It would not have been difficult, to run his hands down her back, to catch hold of her and lift her up and take her hard and fast there against the door; Ruth was not a particularly large woman, and Harry had strength enough for that. Though some base, animal part of him wanted that, wanted to have her now, wanted the reassurance of her trembling heat wrapped around him, he knew that she deserved better than to be treated in such a fashion when she had so recently endured a great trauma, and so he forced himself to pull back, resting his forehead against her own and gasping for breath.

"I'm all right, Harry," she said again, understanding without need of words what he had been trying to tell her, how frightened he had been, how utterly wrecked he would be if he lost her.

"I know," he said softly. "I know."

 _I just couldn't bear to lose you, not now, not after everything. Please, god, I cannot lose you again._

* * *

Having neatly arranged the capture of Sarah Caulfield - and having allowed Ros the exquisite pleasure of shooting her in the leg - Harry sent everyone home for the evening. Sarah was under lock and key, recovering from her injury in hospital, and he wanted to give everyone, Lucas most especially, a chance to regroup and rest before they went back at her. His motives were not altogether altruistic, however, for in truth what Harry wanted more than anything was a convenient excuse to have Ruth naked in his bed.

"Oh, _god,_ Harry," she groaned as he continued his efforts to reduce her to a shuddering mess. Her hands were fisted in his sheets, her head cast back upon the pillows, her body bowing in a graceful arc as he traced the shape of her folds with his tongue and drew a mewling sound of want from her lips yet again. The taste of her, the heat of her, the sight of her, pale skin faintly glowing beneath a thin sheen of sweat, the perfect swells of her breasts rising and falling with each of her heaving breaths, the knowledge that she was his, utterly and completely, that no one else would be privy to this moment, to this vision of her lost in bliss, was more intoxicating than any drink.

He shifted slightly, trying to ignore the sound of his cock crying out for her as he wrapped his lips around the little nub at her center and thrust his finger inside her with no preamble. She keened, high and sweet, and thrust down towards his face, her body clutching him, drawing him in further, begging him for more. He gave it to her willingly, lavished every weapon his arsenal upon her until she was all but weeping her pleasure, gasping and boneless and tangled up in his sheets where she belonged. She was transcendent, his Ruth, and he loved her more than anyone or anything else in the world.

As discretely as he could Harry wiped his face on the sheet, grinning brilliantly when Ruth tangled her fingers in his hair and tugged gently, silently asking him to join her. Which of course he did at once; he stretched himself out along the length of her body and bowed his head to kiss her, his head spinning at the way she chased the taste of herself on his tongue. _I love you,_ he thought, but he did not have a chance to say it for she wrapped her legs around his hips and drew him towards her, and he found himself powerless to resist her a single second longer. They worked together until at last his hardness was sliding into her wet heat, long and slow, the sound of her satisfied moan lost beneath his own desperate groan. They had been building towards this moment since they kissed in his office, and Harry had no reserves left. He did not waste time on tenderness, for he had already given to her all the gentleness he possessed, with the softness of his lips and the sweep of his tongue, and all that was left now was urgent, blinding need. She was _his,_ and with every powerful thrust of his hips he laid claim to her, and she accepted him, wholly and completely, wrapped her arms around him and clung to him while they ground and thrust and moaned together. Nothing could hurt them in this place; the sting of her nails against his back, the way she cradled him close, the way she breathed his name on every pleading sigh made the moment too beautiful for pain.

Onward he plunged, feeling her stretch and tremble around him, the heat between them growing until at last she burst and shattered and he followed after, unable to resist the call of her body.

 _I love you, I love you, I love you,_ he thought as he collapsed against her, but he could not spare the breath for words, and so he only kissed her bare shoulder, and held her close.


	18. Chapter 18

**A/N: apologies for the short-ish chapter. The next one will be significantly longer, and I wanted this to stand alone.**

* * *

Everything was happening too quickly, and there seemed to be no way to stop it. Sarah Caulfield was dead, before she had a chance to tell them truth about any bloody thing, Lucas was beside himself, hardly knowing which was up now that his lover had been revealed as a traitor, now that she had been murdered in her hospital bed with Lucas only a few steps away. The wheels were turning, faster and faster, a vast, well-funded, international machinery designed specifically to ignite a nuclear war in a volatile region of the world.

As he often did when his life became so muddled that he hardly knew his own name Harry made his way to the rooftop of Thames House. He liked this view of London, his beautiful, storied city. He liked to watch the sparkling of the city lights, the muddy bend of the river, liked to stand with his hands tucked in his pockets and try to pick out as many famous landmarks as he could from this vantage point. This vast, bustling city was full of every sort of person, doing every sort of thing, but up here he was somewhat removed from the noise, able to appreciate the whole splendid picture rather than allowing himself to be distracted by the many disparate details. This was a city full of life, and some shadowy, nefarious beast he could neither identify nor incapacitate was set to destroy it.

She came to him in his hour of need, as she always did, somehow knowing intrinsically just how bleak his outlook had become. His beautiful, wonderful Ruth; he had already confessed to her, more than once, how he loved her, and though those words welled up in him again at the sight of her he did not give them voice, thinking only pale an imitation of his true feelings they were. There were not words for this, for the comfort she brought him, the strength she gave to him, for the way her beauty had only been magnified by the depth of his devotion to her. There were not words enough to encapsulate the way she soothed him, the way he craved her, the way he longed to know, every minute, what she was thinking, the way he wanted nothing in all the world so much as to sit in a quiet place and listen to the sound of her voice. _Love_ was the only word he had, but it only began to scratch the surface of his regard for her.

They spoke quietly for a few moments, of Lucas, of what little information he'd managed to glean from Sarah Caulfield before her death. _Forest fires;_ that was how she had described her cohort's plan to destroy the world. A controlled burn; let poor brown people in some far-flung corner of the globe perish in their thousands, their millions, and when the dust settled a new world order more to Sarah Caulfield's liking would rise in its place. Nightingale intended to sacrifice the lives and history and civilization of people they deemed _less than_ in order to achieve their own preferred version of society. For a moment he was reminded of Juliet and Ros's involvement with Yalta, the heady promise of a better world, once the old guard was swept away. It was somehow both callous and naive, this insistence on using discriminate violence in order to change the existing system, and Harry would have laughed if his heart were not breaking at the thought of what was to become of his city, of him, his darling Ruth, should Nightingale's plans be allowed to proceed. There was no such thing as a better way, to Harry's mind; individual humans could be brave and strong and good, but as far as he was concerned in groups they tended towards greed and selfishness, and every utopia that had ever been built upon the earth had crumbled beneath the weight of that self-interest. Could their lives, the lives of the Indians and the Pakistanis, the lives of every oppressed and subjugated person on the planet, be improved? Of course they could, he believed, but not like this, not through outside interference, not through nuclear war.

At last it seemed that Ruth agreed with him. Nightingale might have been running the talks, might hold all the cards, but Harry Pearce had always been a belligerent bastard, and he wasn't about to give up now. And Ruth seemed equally as incensed, equally as convinced that their cause was a just one. As they spoke he had been lost in maudlin thoughts about what exactly was meant by _the greater good,_ and how people could come to such wildly different conclusions, but when he looked at her now he felt a certain sense of peace overcome him. The greater good, he believed in that moment, would be whatever Ruth said it was, and he would follow her counsel gladly, as he always did, for she had become his north star, guiding him home.

"Do you still sing?" he asked her suddenly. It was a half-remembered detail from her former life, but he suddenly realized that in all the time they'd spent together recently he couldn't recall whether she had taken it up again. "In your choir?"

She shook her head, ever so slightly, as if she couldn't quite understand why he would ask her such a thing, not now in this moment of crippling doubt and towering, urgent chaos, but she answered him just the same.

"Yes. We're doing Beethoven's Ninth. _Ode to Joy._ "

He smiled to think of it. They had not spent every single night of the last few months together, and he supposed that on those evenings when she was alone she must have slipped away to rehearsals. He wondered about it for a moment, wondered if she used a legend or if she had returned to the same group as Ruth Evershed, revived from death to walk amongst them once more. He tried to picture it, Ruth standing with a - rather frumpy looking, in his mind - bunch of people, singing in her soft clear voice, smiling, happy, radiant, free, for once, from the terror that marked their lives. In that moment he made a promise to himself that if they survived this day, he would go to her next performance, would sit quietly in some dusty church pew and pick out the sound of his lover's voice amongst the chorus. It was an enchanting thought.

"Alle Menschen-"

" _Werden Bruder."_ They finished the line together.

"All men will be brothers," he mused.

"Under gentle wings," Ruth continued, and her voice in that moment was gentleness itself, her eyes watching him, searching him, seeing the truth of him at once.

"Harry?" she said when he turned away from her, suddenly overcome by the cruel realities of this world, by the thought of the threat, not to just people he'd never met in India and Pakistan, but to his Ruth, to the fragile, gentle peace they had established for themselves. "Harry, all men are brothers."

She stepped up to him, her hand running softly, comforting, along his arm. He was more grateful than he could say for the gift of her understanding, for the blessing that she should know him so well, and not turn away from him because of it.

"It's why we shed tears for people we don't know."

"It's just the wind, Ruth," Harry said at once, somewhat shamed by how easily he'd given in to his melancholy.

"Yes, of course," she said, knowing him, knowing better than to believe him.

He looked at her for a long moment, knowing he ought to draw this interlude to a close, knowing that there was work to be done, knowing that he did not have the time to spend indulging in a quiet, personal chat with this lovely woman who had become the very center of his whole world. He could not afford such a reprieve, and yet as he looked at her he threw caution to the wind, and held out his arm so that she could slip beside it, nestling against him as if his arms had been made to hold her.

"When will you perform?" he asked her, thinking of the promise he'd made.

"A week from Saturday," she answered, her voice somewhat muffled as she burrowed deeper into the shelter of his arms.

A week from Saturday. The world might be in pieces, a week from Saturday. They might both be dead, or hiding out in a bunker somewhere, or held prisoner by the Nightingale conspirators. The church where she was meant to sing might be leveled by bombs, by the time that evening rolled around. And yet Ruth had made her plans as if nothing were amiss, the way they all must do, operating under the assumption that somehow, some way they must prevail. To give in to the despair was to give up the fight altogether, and she never stopped fighting, his brilliant Ruth.

"I suppose I need a ticket or something," he said, half musing to himself, half asking her.

In his arms she shifted, leaning back a little so that she could stare up at him incredulously.

"You want to come?" she asked. That she should be so taken aback his request surprised him, and left him somewhat on the back foot, wondering if he'd made a misstep. He'd confessed his love to her and opened his arms and his bed to her; was it really so strange that he would want to support her in this, the one vestige of a normal life remaining to her?

"If it's all right with you," he said slowly. "It's a lovely piece, and I've never heard you sing before."

For a moment she was silent, staring at him, her brow furrowed as if he were a puzzle she needed to solve, but then she smiled.

"All right, then," she said, ducking back to her accustomed spot beneath his chin. "You don't need a ticket. You don't have to pay. You can just come."

"I'd like that," he said.


	19. Chapter 19

"If I didn't know better," Harry said softly, "I'd think that Ros was sweet on our new Home Secretary."

Ruth was so tired she could hardly do more than stare at him dumbly. There was a certain quirk to the corner of his full lips that told her how he hard he was trying to make things easier, to lighten the mood, to bring some semblance of normalcy to the chaos all around them. Now was not a time for normalcy, but still, Ruth's heart went out to him, this brave, impossible man, this man who could be so gentle with her, so tender, who took the time to reassure her even when their world was crumbling to pieces around them.

"Is that why you sent her to the hotel?" Ruth asked, doing her best to rally, for his sake. If Harry could be lighthearted, could tease, could find something in this swirling tide of darkness to smile about, then Ruth would try, for his sake, to do the same.

It was the wrong thing to say, however, for Harry's face fell at her words.

"Ruth," he began softly, and from the pleading note in his voice she could hear that he was preparing to defend himself and his choices to her.

"You don't have to explain anything to me, Harry," she cut across him quickly. The Grid was a bustling hive of activity, and no one had a moment to spare for watching them, and so Ruth reached out and covered Harry's hand with her own where it rested against the corner of her desk. "You made the right call."

It seemed to Ruth that she was saying those words to him with an alarming frequency of late. Everywhere they turned they were met with betrayals and dangers; Russell Price, the American operative who was ostensibly in charge of the India-Pakistan talks, had been revealed as a Nightingale conspirator and the drive behind the sanctioned hit that had killed Sarah Caulfield. They couldn't trust the Americans, the only Chinese operative they trusted had been shot in the chest, the Indians had retreated from the talks with their hackles raised, the Pakistani President remained practically powerless as back home the General in command of his Army ran roughshod over all their plans. Harry's initial mistrust of the Home Secretary had so far proven unfounded, as the man went out of his way to help them and did not deliver information into the hands of Nightingale, but he was still almost comically bright eyed and feckless, and the circumstances surrounding his sudden rise to power left many questions still to be answered. Harry was doing his best to muddle through, to make the right choices for his team, to save the world and protect their precious city, and Ruth knew how great a toll that responsibility was taking on him. Today especially, with the talks on the verge of collapse and the net Nightingale had cast around them drawing ever tighter. He had sent Lucas and Ros to the hotel in the hope that having boots on the ground would be their best defense against whatever horror came next, and Ruth agreed with his decision. Though she still bore no particular affection for Ros their Section Chief had won her begrudging respect, and Ruth knew that Ros and Lucas were the best people for this job.

Harry smiled at her softly, that tender smile he reserved just for her, squared his shoulders and prepared to leave. Before he could take a single step, however, the sound of Ros's steady voice echoed over the coms.

"Harry," she said sharply. "There's a bomb. Timer counting down, thirty minutes to go."

A cold chill fell over Ruth. Harry was barking orders, Tariq was already on the phone with the bomb squad, Ros and Lucas were discussing evacuation plans for the hotel should the device prove too difficult to disarm. Despite the frenetic activity all around her Ruth felt strangely numb, somehow separate from everyone and everything. Death was coming for them. For months now they had done their best to stave off cataclysm, to uncover their enemy and chop fecklessly at the dozens of grasping arms of that nefarious hydra, and all of it had been for naught, for at this very moment there was a bomb in the heart of London, set to go off in half an hour, and if they did not stop it the British Home Secretary, the Pakistani president, and God only knew how many innocent civilians would be slaughter. War would ravage the earth once more, just as Nightingale had intended, and every quiet dream Ruth harbored in her heart for her future and the future of her beautiful city would be left as nothing more than smoking ruins. The words the IRA had issued in the wake of their botched assassination attempt against Margaret Thatcher echoed in Ruth's mind; _t_ _oday we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always._ Ruth couldn't help but wonder if today would be the day their luck ran out, the one time they dropped the ball, and the entire world would be forced to pay the price.

She jumped a little as a broad, strong hand dropped to her shoulder, and she tilted her head back to find Harry there behind her, the expression on his face a mirror image of every thought that flitted through her mind.

"Time to get to work, Ruth," he said softly.

She nodded, and turned her attention to her computer.

* * *

He couldn't take it any more. No information coming in on the comms, the media having a field day - and still standing far too close to the hotel for his liking - the police and the security services issuing contradictory orders. His remit was to command and oversee, to remain in the shadows, out of sight of the general public, but someone had to put a stop to the chaos. He needed someone on the ground, some who could relay accurate information to Ruth and Tariq to organize their efforts, someone with enough gravitas to bring the warring factions of their own personnel into order, someone with enough power and command to take back the reins of the situation. Nightingale had done their best to sow discord, and the whole place was set to go up in a matter of minutes. There was no one else who could do this job, and so he squared his shoulders.

He took a deep breath, and rang his driver. The hotel was close by, he could be there in ten minutes, five if the lights were on his side and his driver put his foot down. It had to be done.

As Harry came marching purposefully out of his office he walked almost directly into Ruth, who had come rushing towards him calling his name. Whatever information she had for him could be relayed to him while he was in the car, and he had no intention of stopping to listen to her now, not because his heart was hardened to her, not because he did not hear what she had to say, but because he knew that if he looked at her too long, if he found himself caught beneath her brilliant gaze, his resolve would crumble, and he would not be able to find the strength to leave her.

"I'm going down there now," he said sharply.

He continued to walk and Ruth kept pace with him, her eyes desperate and pleading. "No, no, _no,"_ she said, and the terror in her voice caused his heart to clench. He would have given anything, _anything,_ to be able to pull her into his arms in that moment, to hold her close and kiss the top of her head and reassure her that all was well. He could not, however, for everyone was looking to him now for leadership, for guidance, for some way out of this mess, and he could not appear weak or vulnerable. "To do what?" she demanded, cutting right to the heart of his dilemma. He was not entirely convinced that his presence would solve anything, but it was a damn sight better than doing nothing, and he had to try.

"Speak to whoever is pretending to be in charge," he said. The rest of that thought - _and take over this operation myself -_ remained unspoken.

"Harry, there's not enough time!" Ruth insisted. He hated to hear that note in her voice, suddenly reminded of that day in the warehouse when she had begged him to save the lives of her partner and her stepson. He had failed then, had been forced to watch as George was killed and Ruth screamed in agony, but he would not fail now. There were hundreds of lives on the line - not to mention the threat of imminient global catastrophe - and he had to stop it.

"You won't be able to achieve anything."

Harry chose to ignore her, for he feared that she was right. "Get me the Met Commander on the ground," he said, trying to assert his authority. It was a weak ploy, for in truth his authority over her had long since ceased to matter to either of them.

"I've just spoken to him," Ruth said, and he could only think _of course she has;_ his brilliant Ruth was always a step ahead of him. "It's chaos down there. Nobody seems to know who's in charge."

That was all that Harry needed to know. If no one was in charge at the hotel, then by God he would go down there and assume that role for himself. Someone had to.

For a moment he stopped, watching her as she continued to outline the situation with the Americans, but in truth her words hardly registered with him. As he watched her all he could think was how lovely she was, how much he adored her, how much he did not want to leave her, how terrified he was that this might well be the last time he ever saw her face. This should not have been the end for them, a frantic, somewhat adversarial conversation playing out in front of the whole Grid; their end should have been decades away, lying old and warm and together in their bed far from the dangers of this life they led. But it was not up to him, to choose the manner of their ending, was beyond his power to give them the life he wished they'd been blessed to lead. They'd made their choices, Harry and Ruth, and now fate swept them on against their own wishes.

At last he turned away from her, marching towards his doom, but she called out his name one last time as he stepped through the pods. The sound of her voice had him spinning to her in a moment, and the look upon her face was one of such terror, such ragged desperation that he very nearly went back to her. The love she felt for him, the horror she felt at the thought of losing him was etched onto every line of her face. _I love you,_ he thought, wishing he felt free enough to tell her now and yet holding himself back. He would not say goodbye to her, would not give into despair, would hold onto the one small shred of hope that he might see her again for as long as he could.

"I'm coming back, Ruth," he said softly, and then he turned away from her, and marched to his doom.

* * *

Once Harry was gone Ruth did her best to stand firm. She was now the most senior officer on the Grid, and every piece of intelligence they gathered, every report, every question was brought to her. She had her mobile pressed to one ear and her desk phone to the other, news coverage playing on one of her monitors while the other spat out a steady stream of data. They had less than two minutes to go, now. Tariq had done his best to reestablish comms, but there was still no word from Ros and Lucas.

Over her mobile she could hear the comforting sound of Harry's voice. He was doing his best to find order amongst the chaos, trying to marshal their people, shouting down the Americans, searching for the Gold Commander - whose conspicuous absence left Ruth suddenly terrified that the man was in fact a part of the conspiracy, for why else should he suddenly disappear entirely from view? There was no real need for Harry to remain on the line with her, given the fact that they weren't actually speaking to one another, but they had by unspoken agreement left this line open, should they have need of it. On her monitor she could just make him out amidst the throng of people, rallying the personnel around him and gesturing with that air of authority only Harry could presume to wield. Though a selfish piece of Ruth's heart desperately wished he was here with her she took comfort from knowing that he had seized control of the situation; her rational mind knew that there was no one better suited to this task than Harry. She wanted her lover safe in her arms, but she knew her boss was right where he needed to be.

Time seemed to slow, as the last few seconds ticked by. Ros, Lucas, the Home Secretary, and the Pakistani President were still inside the building. The fate of the entire world rested on them somehow, some way getting the President out of there alive, but Ruth's faith was flagging. There was no bloody _time,_ and disaster loomed ever nearer.

And then, to her utter shock, she watched as Lucas came tearing into view with the President draped across his shoulders as if he weighed no more than a sack of flour. The relief that tore through her at the sight of him was so great that she collapsed into her chair at once. Lucas was safe, the Pakistani President was alive, and Ruth was certain that Ros and the HS would be a few steps behind him. There was less than a minute to go until the bomb was detonated, but they had managed to get the civilians out of the hotel, and it seemed to her that disaster had been averted. They had, once again, been extraordinarily lucky. Harry was there - she could hear the soft sound of his voice as he spoke to the personnel gathered around him, as the medics saw to the President - and Nightingale's plans had been foiled. Would this be enough, she wondered dimly, to put an end to their machinations? Had they sunk all their resources into this plot? Had enough of their operatives been brought low? Would the President retain enough power to dispose of his mutinous general and reclaim control of his country?

On the monitor the newscast continued; the President was upright, was delivering a rousing speech, insisting that his country would release the Indian sub at once. She could just make out Lucas, running like the very hounds of hell were nipping on his heels, heading straight for the hotel, and the fear returned in full force. Why was he going back? Where was Ros? And for that matter, where was the HS?

"Harry?" Ruth breathed in a shaking voice.

He stood at the very edge of activity the news crew was filming, and she watched as he closed his eyes and ran a tired hand over his face.

"Ruth," he answered, and in his voice she heard a world of sorrow, found the answer to her every question. They were still inside.

"Dear God," Ruth whispered.

And then, cataclysm. There came a great, horrendous boom, over her mobile, over the newscast. The camera spun wildly away from her lover's face, taking in the devastation of the hotel, the billowing cloud of fire and smoke, the terrible rumble of half of the hotel caving in on itself, the screams of frightened people all around Harry. There was a moment, after the explosion, after the initial shock, of utter silence. Debris wafting through the air, sirens wailing in the distance, a hush falling over those assembled in that place, before mobile service cut out as a result of too many people making too many calls at once, before the true horror of it sunk in and the voices of the gathered masses would roar to a crescendo once more, a moment of stillness before the frantic activity would resume.

In that moment the thin line that connected Harry to Ruth remained intact, though she could no longer see him.

"Ruth?" she heard his voice, thin and sounding almost frightened. _Where is Ros, where is Lucas, oh God, Harry come home, come back to me,_ she thought, but she did not give voice to her weakness, would not let her vulnerability where the people she cared for was concerned to drag her into the depths of despair.

"I'm here, Harry," she answered, though her voice was shaking.

"I love you," he said, and then he hung up the phone.


	20. Chapter 20

"Reinforcements," a low voice called through the open door.

Ruth lifted her head, blinking bleary-eyed and exhausted at Frank Holland, the long-time head of A Section who had been quite friendly with she and Harry over the years. When she turned her eyes to gaze out through the windows of Harry's office she saw a bevy of officers fanning out to replace her burned out team, and she heaved a great sigh, somehow both relieved and sad all at once.

"Come on then, Ruth," Frank said, not unkindly. "Up you get. Your team hasn't slept in forty-eight hours. You're all rostered off for tomorrow. Go home and get some sleep. I'll man the fort."

It wasn't easy, turning over Harry's desk and command of the Grid to someone else, even someone as likable and well trained as Frank Holland. Ruth had been sitting in this chair for nearly eight hours now, from the moment the bomb exploded and mobile service dropped and she lost all contact with Harry and Lucas. There were phone calls to take - from the PM, from the head of Six, from the Met, from Special Branch, from every-bloody-body - and rescue efforts to organize. She had sent Tariq down to the bomb site with the head of one of their teams and every bit of kit that he thought might prove useful, and he had finally established a link between the office and Harry. Harry's suspicions regarding the mysterious disappearance of the Met Commander had proved correct, as the man had been found sitting in his car a few streets away with a hole in his head; either he had been part of the Nightingale conspiracy and took his own life when things went pear-shaped, or Nightingale had taken it upon themselves to remove him in order to add to the chaos. Either way, someone on site had to assume command, and there was no doubt in anyone's mind that that someone would be Harry.

Harry, who was at this very moment still at the bomb site, and staunchly refusing to leave.

"Thanks, Frank," Ruth said as she slowly began to gather up her things. Her team was in ruins; Ros was gone, most likely dead - though the efforts to put out the flames and slog through the wreckage in search of bodies continued - Lucas was injured and giving the doctors at St. Thomas's no end of grief as they insisted he stay overnight and he insisted he had to leave, Tariq hadn't slept properly in a week, and the other analysts and support personnel were all dead on their feet. The time had come to leave, but there was one last thing Ruth needed to do.

"I'm going to arrange a car for Harry," she said, noting the way Frank's brow furrowed as if in interest, not caring in the least what conclusions he was drawing. "Will you call ahead to the bomb site and let them know to expect me?"

All the information Frank needed was laid out neatly on the desk, lists of phone calls made and those calls waiting to be returned, lists of who was in charge of what piece of the operation and who would step in to relieve them, numbers and figures and party lines to trot out when uncomfortable questions were raised. Everything was in hand, all operations running as they should, and she knew that he could this one thing for her, however strange he might think it. To his credit, he did not ask any questions.

"Of course," he said.

And that was that.

* * *

It was nearing 2:00 a.m. when Ruth's car was finally waved through the security cordon surrounding the smoldering remains of the hotel. She'd rung Harry's personal driver, and the man had come at once, seemingly unconcerned by the way she presumed to order him about. They had developed a somewhat friendly rapport, and she knew that he bore a deep respect for Harry. Mike wanted to see Harry home safe and sound just as much as Ruth did.

The bomb site had been well contained, and where before it had all been in chaos now everything she saw spoke of order and efficiency. Equipment and people moved to and fro beneath the emergency lighting, and Ruth wound her way closer to the spot where Harry had told her he was setting up camp. A tent had been constructed, bristling with wires and voices, people coming and going with determined looks upon their faces, and she knew that was where she'd find him, right at the heart of things. When she arrived, the first thing she saw was Harry and Tariq arguing with two young men she recognized from Thames House, part of their reinforcements.

"Now see here," Harry was saying in his best _boss spook_ voice, and Ruth decided that moment was as good as any to assert her presence and smooth over any ruffled feathers.

"Harry," she called his name softly.

All the anger, all the aggression, all the fight seemed to leave him at once as his eyes fell upon her. He did not smile, could not smile, not when Ros's body lay buried in the rubble behind him, but she could see in his face that he was grateful for her presence. She felt much the same. They had lost an invaluable member of their team, a dear friend - to Harry, at least - but they still had each other, and they were still too relieved to feel guilty for that fact.

"Ruth," he said, his voice as warm and low as hers had been. "I'll just be a moment."

"No, Harry," she countered, more authoritatively this time.

The chagrin on his face might have made her laugh, had their circumstances not been so very dire. She rushed on before he could voice his objections.

"The interim Met Commander is handling organization and the DG has ordered us to go home. All of us. That means you, Tariq," she added. The young man would have worked until his very heart gave out if they asked it of him, she knew, but the time had come to send him home, to protect what remained of their shattered team. "Your driver is here, he'll take you home," she continued, returning her attentions to Harry, trying to communicate to him with a look that she had no intention of sending him home alone. "Let these men do their jobs, Harry."

She could feel the eyes of their replacements on her back, knowing that if she looked at them she'd see both awe and curiosity on their faces. No one ordered Harry Pearce around and lived to tell the tale, and everyone knew it. Likely this little exchange would provide fodder for the rumor mill for days to come, but Ruth was too bloody tired and too bloody scared to care.

For a moment it looked as if Harry meant to disagree with her, to assert his authority and insist that he would remain in place, but at long last his shoulders slumped, and he gave her a little nod.

"Very well," he said, and some of the chains of panic that had wound over Ruth's heart eased their grip, just a little. It had been a truly horrible day, but they were going home, together.

"Tariq, do you need a ride?" Harry asked, scrubbing a hand across his face, suddenly looking so much older, so much more broken, than he had a moment before.

The techie shook his head, and Ruth reached out to Harry all unthinking, driven by some subconscious need to touch him, to reassure herself that he was real, that he was all right, that they really had survived this ordeal. If Harry thought it strange or unprofessional he said not a word, simply took her hand and laced their fingers together, following along behind her as she led the way back to Mike, waiting to take them home.

* * *

They did not speak, on the long drive to Harry's house. They each murmured a soft good-bye to Mike and then stepped through the front door, together, in silence. They did not speak as Ruth led Harry, not to his bedroom, but to the kitchen, her hands on his shoulders guiding him gently to a chair where he slumped and sat staring moodily off into the middle distance while Ruth fixed them each a cup of tea and a few slices of toast. They did not speak while they ate, though Ruth had reached for him the moment she sat down, wrapping her hand around his own and refusing to let go, choosing instead to maneuver rather clumsily with one hand so that she could maintain that connection to him. They did not speak when at last she parted from him and carried their dishes to the sink, when she stood behind him and placed a tender kiss against the top of his head, when he rose ponderously to his feet and wrapped his arm around her waist, and together they mounted the stairs.

They did not speak until they were lying in bed together, Harry bare-chested and wearing only his trunks, Ruth swaddled in one of his old t-shirts. In the darkness they wound themselves together as tightly as they could, both of Ruth's legs wrapped close around one of Harry's muscular thighs, one of her hands tracing idle patterns against the smooth skin of his chest while the other slid beneath his head, fingers splayed in the soft curls at the base of his neck. Both of his arms held her tight to him, his hands idle, his heart too heavy to do much more than hold her close.

"I'm sorry, Harry," Ruth whispered into the darkness.

He was not shaking, was not weeping, was not cursing his fate, and there was no tension in him; in the darkness she could not make out his expression, and she realized in that moment she had no idea what he was thinking.

"You've nothing to be sorry for," he told her gently, and the fear that had been nipping at her heels from the moment the bomb went off began to recede, ever so slowly. He was here, he was with her, and he was holding her tight, and she knew she could not ask for more than this. "If anything, I should be apologizing to you."

The fear roared back with a vengeance so quickly that it left Ruth feeling a bit dizzy. She was exhausted, she was heartbroken, she was feeling so many things all at once she hardly knew what to do with herself. Ros was _gone,_ Ros who had before this day seemed so invincible, so far above the petty human failing of mortality. The HS was gone as well, the entire international intelligence community was reeling, nuclear war had only just been averted, and Harry was apologizing to her in a tone of voice so very sad and so very hopeless that it left her feeling nearly hysterical with doubt and grief. Through all the tumult of the last few years Harry had been her constant, her touchstone, her anchor, the one person who remained strong and true when everyone else around them failed, and she could not bear to lose him now.

"Harry," she breathed, but in a moment he was speaking again.

"All I do is bring you grief, Ruth," he said in a heavy voice. "You've lost so much, so many friends, so much _time,_ and it's all my fault."

Ruth shifted, rolled across his body until she was sitting astride his hips and looking down at him. Harry had never looked his age so much as he did in that moment, closing his eyes rather than face her, every line and every mark of his body speaking to the years of grief and pain he'd endured.

"It isn't your fault, Harry," she said sternly, and when he still refused to look at her she leaned down and kissed him once, firmly and determinedly. "You did everything you could. The Pakistani President is still alive and the bloody apocalypse was averted because of what you did today."

He opened his mouth to protest but she barreled on, heedless. "Yes, Ros is gone. And yes, I feel that pain, too, Harry. I might not have been as close to her as you were but she was a member of our team. Our family. It hurts me, too. But Ros made her choice. And you did everything you could for her, and I am so _proud_ of you." Her voice broke as she spoke the word _proud,_ tears filling her eyes unbidden as she realized just how true that sentiment was. She was so proud of him she nearly burst with it; Harry had done the unthinkable, had restored order out of chaos, had led the charge to save the civilians, had - with her help, of course- averted disaster. He had fought the good fight so long and so well that there were hundreds, thousands of people the world over who only lived today because of his efforts. He was brave, and strong, and decisive, and she was _proud_ to know him, to love him, to belong to him, to claim him for her own. She had never met a man greater or more terrible than Harry, and her love for him breathed like a living thing in her chest, fierce and true and _proud._

"Ruth-"

"We all made our choices. You gave me a chance to leave, remember? More than one. I made up my mind a long time ago, Harry. Yes, this life hurts. Yes, we've lost more friends than anyone has a right to. _Yes,_ Ros's death should be avenged. But there is no one, _no one,_ I would rather stand beside than you. I choose you, Harry."

As she came to the end of her rather grand declaration Ruth reached and took Harry's hand in her own, lacing their fingers together and holding on tight. At last his eyes opened, watching her with a sort of wonder, a depth of love and vulnerability she had rarely seen there before. Sometimes Ruth rather felt as if this choice had been made for her, long ago, as if the first time she met him in that interview room so many years before, the first time he reached out and shook her hand and let his honey brown eyes wander over her a cord had sprung up from the ether, binding their souls together, irreversibly, eternally, inevitably. There was no one and nothing she wanted more than Harry, and she would do whatever it took to keep him, for as long fate would allow.

"I love you," he murmured into the quiet, running his hands along the slope of her back, drawing her down towards him. Ruth intended to answer him in kind, but he did not give her the chance, his lips claiming hers in a hungry kiss that did more to reassure the pair of them than any words could ever hope to do.

Their hearts were aching, but they would mend, as they always did, so long as they clung to one another.


	21. Chapter 21

_One week later…_

It was a Saturday evening, and Harry Pearce was sitting very still in a pew in St. Martin-In-The-Field, all but holding his breath as the music washed over him. The very air in that place had taken on beatific, rarefied sort of quality, and if he closed his eyes he could almost see the ghosts of old friends come to sit alongside him. They had not come to haunt him with bloodstained faces and accusatory eyes; when his thoughts drifted to those he'd lost - and Ros most especially as that wound was freshest - he felt only a peaceful sort of lament. They had given their lives in sacrifice so that others' lives might be saved, and as he sat in that place, thinking of that sacrifice, thinking of St. Martin who had with his sword cut his own cloak in two so that he could give half of it to a beggar on a cold winter's day, he felt profoundly grateful. He was grateful for their sacrifice, grateful to have known such brave souls, grateful to still be living, to take up their charge. He was grateful for this place, and this moment to sit in quiet contemplation.

And by God, he was grateful for Ruth.

She had as it turned somewhat undersold the sophistication of her choir, for they were at present performing the entirety of Beethoven's Ninth with grace and vigor. His eyes sought her out through the cool dimness of that room, finding her at once. Ruth and her compatriots were all dressed in black, his lover wearing a soft dress that tucked in neatly at her waist and flared around her hips, the sleeves stopping just beneath her elbows and the demure cut of the neckline showing off a modest amount of her pale skin. Her eyes shone, as she sang, her dark hair curling gently around her face, and as he watched her it seemed to him that he found the answer to his every question in her glorious eyes. She was beautiful, was Ruth, possessed of a loveliness that was all her own, made all the more remarkable by his knowledge of her spirit, her heart, her resilience. To Harry it was almost as if the room were empty save for himself and his love and their memories, so wholly did she command his attention. He spared a moment for wondering if anyone else in that place was as captivated by her, if any of the people standing alongside her had any idea what sort of woman sang in their midst, the life she had led, the grand and terrible things she had done. He supposed not; to them she was likely just Rachel - for he had collected a program as he entered the building, and saw that none of the singers was named _Ruth,_ but one was called _Rachel Evans,_ and he was dead certain that was her legend - quiet and retiring and utterly unremarkable. _Poor bastards,_ he thought, counting himself a lucky one indeed to have been blessed to share her life so intimately.

As the music swelled and burst around him he pondered his Ruth, and the state of affairs between them, and the condition of his own battered heart. She was everything to him, was Ruth, had stood by him in his darkest hour, had led them all through calamity, had shown dignity and grace under pressure, had demonstrated a capacity for leadership that he knew no one had previously ascribed to her. That was the thing about Ruth; she was terribly unassuming, but when the moment called for it she could rise to any occasion, and completely trounce any previously held notion as to the limits of her determination. There was no institution in the country safe from her intellect, and there was no problem too big for her gentle hands.

The last few months had been riddled with chaos and doubt and grief, but the end of the Nightingale fiasco - for in truth the key players had all fallen like dominoes once the Pakistani President had returned home and placed the leader of his army in prison - brought with it a welcome respite, a chance to reflect. And as Harry thought back over that tumultuous time, the one truth he came back to, time and time again, was that he was certain their efforts would not have been half so successful had Ruth not been by his side. He was doubly certain that he personally would not have been able to hold himself together, to toe the line, to do the right thing, had it not been for her gentle guidance. It was Ruth who counselled prudence, who gave him a safe place to voice his misgivings, who sat up with him many a night and talked through whatever problem they were facing when no one else on his team would have - or could have - done the same. It was Ruth who held him, when his heart was breaking, Ruth who had slowly begun to mend the fissures in his very soul.

It was Ruth he could not - did not want to - live without.

At last the concert drew to a close, and Harry shuffled outside with the rest of the throng. The choir would remain behind for drinks and a bit of a party, but Ruth had confessed that she had no interest in attending, and agreed to meet him just outside the church when the music was finished. So Harry lingered there on the edge of Trafalgar Square, looking out upon the fountain and the statues and the twinkling lights of his beloved London. For the most part the throngs of tourists that throttled the square in the daytime had departed, and Harry was allowed the opportunity to gaze out across the plaza, to think. In the darkness he picked out Nelson's Column and the great lions, thinking about Nelson, about Bloody Sunday, about the hundreds of demonstrations that had taken place in the square, the people who had come together on that ground to lift their voices for freedom, to howl their dissent, to demand more from their government. Harry had, in his own way, committed his life to similar goals, and he wondered then, tucking his hands in his pockets and breathing deeply of the crisp night air, how he would be remembered by those who had known him. There would be no songs for Sir Harry Pearce, he knew, no public displays of gratitude for all that he had done - besides the knighthood he had quietly received for reasons left unspecified, standing next to an aging pop star - but he worked hard and tried his best not for glory, but for the sake of the people he led, all those who had placed their confidence in him. He hoped that he done them proud, that one day they would remember him fondly, as he remembered Ros, and Jo, and Adam, and Fiona, and Danny, and Colin, and Bill, and all the rest. He hoped that, years from now, Ruth would still be proud of him.

In the midst of this reverie she came to him, silent as a shadow but smiling at him softly in the darkness. He could not help but return that smile when she slipped her arm through his and sidled up close enough for him to brush a kiss against her temple.

"You did beautifully, Ruth," he told her earnestly. Ruth had performed a solo in the piece, and all but stunned him with the sweet clarity of her gentle voice. At his words she shone, and an idea that he had been wrestling with for weeks now began to solidify in his heart.

"Thank you," she murmured. "Now, how about that drink?"

Harry had promised to take Ruth for a drink after, and so they set off on foot, to cross the square and make their way down to The Admiralty for a pint and perhaps a bit of food. With each step they took Harry's heart beat harder, and faster, until he could hardly think for the rush of blood in his ears. It had to be _now,_ he told himself, in this moment while her steps were light, when they were not thinking of death and loss but instead buoyed along upon a wave of hope. They drew level with the fountain, and Harry stopped in his tracks.

Beside him Ruth stumbled, unprepared for his abrupt movement, and he caught her with both hands on her hips, drawing her close to him once more. Trembling now, Harry bowed his head so that their foreheads were touching, gently, his lips so close to hers, his eyes closed lest the sheer glory of her stun him at such intimate proximity.

"Harry," Ruth breathed, her hands rising up between them to grasp at his lapels, draw him closer. Perhaps she thought he meant to kiss her, and to be fair he did, but there was something he had to say first.

"Marry me, Ruth," he whispered, his voice only just carrying above the splashing of the fountain.

It was rash, he knew, to ask her such a thing when they had not even discussed it, but the truth was he had loved her for years, and now that he knew that love was returned he could not spend another moment without her by his side.

At his words Ruth gasped, and he rushed to explain himself, not releasing his hold on her, taking some comfort from the fact that she did not step away from him.

"I love you," he said, thinking that was probably the best place to start, "and I don't want to waste another moment of our time together pretending you don't mean absolutely everything to me. Ros _died,_ Ruth, and it could very well be me next. I don't know how much time is left to me, but I do know that I want to spend every minute of it with you. Marry me, Ruth."

"Harry, I know losing Ros has shaken you," she began slowly, but Harry just shook his head, and pressed on.

"It's made me see clearly. You and I, we've lost so much _time,_ because of our circumstances, because of what other people might think. I don't give a damn what anyone thinks but you, Ruth. I love you. Most completely. Why shouldn't we be together and happy for as long as we can?"

In his arms, Ruth was shaking. She was warring with herself, he knew, her tendency towards self-preservation battling against the desires of her heart. For a moment he was terribly uncertain as to which side of her would prevail; oh, he knew that she loved him, knew that she had laid down beside him in his bed and whispered her love, her devotion to him, had casually remarked once that things might be a bit easier if they lived in the same place, had returned to him amidst grief and yet given him everything she had without reservation. He could only pray that, just this once, she would listen to her heart, would allow herself this opportunity to be happy, to cast aside the sorrow that had marked her for so many long years now.

"Oh, Harry," she said, her voice choked by tears, and his heart began to sink, but then she was speaking again, "Are you sure?"

A cautious sort of hope rose up within him.

"I've never been more sure of anything in my life," he swore.

Ruth leaned back in his arms, reaching up to cradle his cheeks in her palms, forcing him to look at her, at the tears sparkling diamond-bright in the corners of her eyes, the smallest of smiles begin to light upon her full lips.

"Then yes, Harry," she whispered. "Yes, I will marry you."

There was nothing for it then but to kiss her, and so he did, with great relish, his hands still clasping her hips, clinging to her for dear life as the fountain played beside them and the lights of the city twinkled all around them and together they cultivated a small seed of hope. Yes, she would be his wife, and he would be her husband, and he would do whatever he could to make her happy, all the rest of his days.

He could not kiss her indefinitely, however, not in such a public place, and so he slowly withdrew, catching her bottom lip between his teeth for just a moment, nipping lightly, a promise for later.

"Well, then," he said, grinning somewhat foolishly. "Would you still like that drink, Lady Pearce?"

Her eyes widened at his teasing, and then she choked out a tear-soaked laugh, and shook her head.

"Take me home, Sir Harry," she said breathlessly.

And so he did.


End file.
